Erik Smith

Record producer of infallible taste with Decca and then Philips

Erik Georg Sebastian Schmidt-Isserstedt (Erik George Sebastian Smith), record producer: born Rostock, Germany 25 March 1931; married 1967 Priscilla Wakefield (née Bagot; two daughters); died Yeovil, Somerset 4 May 2004.

Erik Smith was one of the world's leading producers in the heroic age of stereo recording.

His career with Decca and Philips extended from 1956 to 1991: subtract 200 years and, by a quirk of fortune, you have the exact years of Mozart's life. His insights into Mozart's music were extraordinary: in the bicentennial year his record company published, under his artistic direction, the complete works in a set of no less than 180 CDs, many of which Smith had himself produced - and in some cases edited, too.

In the 1970s and 1980s he collaborated with Colin Davis on trail-blazing recordings of Berlioz and he was the producer of choice for many other distinguished classical artists. Among his attributes were a fine ear, infallible taste, unflagging enthusiasm, modesty and a gift for diplomacy that was particularly useful in a milieu renowned for the giant egos of divas and conductors.

Erik Smith was born in 1931. His parents were both Berliners but he was born in Rostock, where his father, the distinguished conductor Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, was in charge of the opera. (He was also a composer and had written his doctoral thesis on the early operas of Mozart.) Erik's mother was Jewish and she left Nazi Germany in 1936 with her two sons, eventually settling in England.

Educated at Felsted and naturalised in 1948, Smith did National Service before going up to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he took a First in Modern Languages - like Mozart he was fluent in French, German and Italian. His first job was at the Vienna office of Universal Edition, the publishers of avant-garde music.

Vienna in post-war, Third Man days was stimulating, and opera-going was cheap, but Smith's publishing work was less than completely congenial and a chance suggestion from a friend of his father, the American pianist Julius Katchen, led to a crucial career shift which would permit him to combine his linguistic skills with his musical knowledge: he joined Decca as part of the brilliant team John Culshaw recruited to produce the stereo recordings which were transforming the industry in the 1950s.

He was thrown in at the deep end: his initial solo effort, in 1958, was a daunting task, nothing less than the first complete recording of Peter Grimes, with Peter Pears in the title role and the composer himself conducting. Smith had swiftly grasped Culshaw's philosophy of creating a dramatic experience through sound alone and the recording became something of a classic - the words were crystal clear, even in the big ensembles, the orchestral sound richly detailed and the spatial effects highly effective, among them the terrifying moment in Act Two when the chorus of townsfolk bray for Grimes's blood as they march off towards the fisherman's hut.

Smith subsequently worked all over Europe for Decca, notably in Rome, where he recorded a famous Bohème with Tebaldi and Bergonzi, and back in Vienna, where he was one of Culshaw's principal lieutenants for Georg Solti's epoch-making recording with the Vienna Philharmonic of the Ring cycle. It was a tribute to Smith's track record (and his gift for musical diplomacy) that in 1966 CBS borrowed him and the entire Decca team to record Falstaff in Vienna under Leonard Bernstein's ebullient baton.

In Austria he recorded the Vienna Mozart Ensemble led by Willi Boskovsky in the complete dances and marches of Mozart, and he put his passion to further use back in London by recording all the works for wind instruments, creating a stylish band - the London Wind Players - specifically for the project. He also orchestrated some of Mozart's childhood notebook sketches for a Mozart in Chelsea disc and was delighted when a reviewer he respected commented that the composer himself wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.

In 1968 Smith moved to what was then the rival company of Philips: he became artistic director of its classical division and stayed there for more than two decades. Working in close collaboration with the conductor Colin Davis, he masterminded the noble project of recording the major works of the unjustly neglected Hector Berlioz.

Smith loved long-running projects and worked with other distinguished conductors on pioneering operatic enterprises, notably Antal Dorati (Haydn) and Lamberto Gardelli (early Verdi). He was a canny judge of talent and among his many signings for Philips, in the days when classical music was still big business and highly competitive, were Alfred Brendel, José Carreras, Jessye Norman and Mitsuko Uchida, with whom he was planning to record a new cycle of Mozart violin and piano sonatas next month.

Judged by sheer volume, however, his most prolific association was with Neville Marriner and his Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields. In 1963, when Marriner was still leading the LSO's second violins, they both spent a summer studying conducting with the veteran Pierre Monteux. The course proved to be a turning point for only one of the two friends, but Smith never regretted remaining a "backroom boy" and he always relished telling Monteux stories with a splendid French accent - he was a wicked mimic. Among the most memorable Marriner/Smith collaborations was the highly popular soundtrack compilation from Amadeus. Marriner became a West Country neighbour with whom Smith enjoyed playing tennis, swapping stories and drinking good wine.

Smith was obliged to carry out his administrative work at his company's head office in Holland. Casting, auditions and contract negotiations involved frequent travel but, despite the cosmopolitan glamour of the job, he was happiest at home with his wife, the painter Priscilla Bagot. Their hospitable Somerset cottage, surrounded by paddocks and a bountiful garden, was shared with cats, dogs, horses and the frequent company of their two daughters, Miranda and Susanna.

After formal retirement in 1991 he devoted more time to riding, "to keep his family company", as he put it, trekking in Spain as well in his beloved Dorset and Somerset, whose countryside he knew intimately. He developed new skills as a baker and marmalade-maker, but he never stopped working and was in demand as a freelance, recently producing Renée Fleming's award-winning Bel Canto CD and a set of Prokofiev's five piano concertos with Nicolai Demidenko.

Throughout his career he was unfailingly efficient in the studio, swift and decisive, courteous, judicious and articulate. Some producers are primarily concerned with fidelity to the notes in the score. Erik Smith was equally interested in style, in spirit and in drama. (Not for nothing was Shakespeare the only rival to Mozart in his affections.) As a busman's holiday he liked to organise public recitals at nearby Forde Abbey and he served as President of Dorset Opera for several years; he often played the continuo part in its productions of classical operas.

He was an excellent pianist, too, and (another Mozartian echo) a proficient viola player: the definition of a gentleman, he used to joke, is somebody who knows how to play the viola but doesn't. He enjoyed taking part in chamber music and piano duets at his home and marked his recovery last year from an initial bout of cancer with inspiring performances of piano trios by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. He edited and gave the title to John Culshaw's unfinished autobiography, Putting the Record Straight (1981), but was reluctant to write his own memoirs.

At least we have his musical legacy in the shape of more than 90 opera recordings, many of them classics in their class, as well as a body of beautifully recorded orchestral works and the great complete Mozart edition, a project which will never be surpassed for range and quality. "I do feel a tremendous affinity with him", he once observed. "If I think music, I think Mozart."

Humphrey Burton