In 1935, Robert Brouwer bought an autograph book from a small shop in Amsterdam. A few days each week, he would stand outside the city’s world famous concert hall waiting for famous musicians to appear. Within five years, he’d not only collected the signatures of most of the great names in 20th century music, he’d also become the resident page-turner and was known as the house cat of the Concertgebouw. In “Turning the Pages”, Robert Brouwer looks back at that period before World War Two and finds an Amsterdam rich with musical brilliance.
Producer: Chris Chambers
Broadcast: March 3, 2005
Robert Brouwer’s memoirs “Turning the Pages: Recollections of a musical autograph collector and page-turner at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw ” were published by Kahn & Averill, London, 2003