Ronald A. Wilford, a spotlight-shunning manager who became one of the most powerful figures in classical music in the second half of the 20th century not by conducting orchestras but by orchestrating the careers of conductors, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 87.
His death was announced by Tim Fox, the president of Columbia Artists Management Inc., the agency where Mr. Wilford had worked for more than 50 years.
By managing many of the leading maestros of his era — over the years his clients included Herbert von Karajan, James Levine, Claudio Abbado, Seiji Ozawa, Riccardo Muti, Kurt Masur and Colin Davis, among others — Mr. Wilford was able to wield enormous influence in many of the world’s top concert halls and opera houses, often simultaneously, for decades.
Mr. Wilford ran his empire from a small Italianate building across from Carnegie Hall where, for three decades, he was president of Columbia Artists. During his ascent, classical music was a growth industry, with lucrative recording contracts and touring opportunities. He became famous for his ability to negotiate ever-bigger paychecks for top conductors, often in multiple cities as the jet age allowed them to divide their time between several orchestras — a development some critics came to see as harmful.
Tales of his clout were legion: how orchestras seeking music directors would simply take him to lunch and run down his list of clients; how his relationships with major conductors would ease the way for other Columbia artists to appear with their orchestras; how he could make and break careers. But he kept a low profile, and could be self-effacing to the point of cryptic.
“I’m very unimportant,” he told The New York Times in 1995.
That is not how the music industry viewed him.
Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera and a former protégé of Mr. Wilford’s who worked with him at Columbia Artists in the 1980s, put it this way: “It was just assumed that because he was managing all these artists, who were in positions of such power and control, that he therefore had to be in a position of the ultimate power and control.”
There were periods when conductors managed by Mr. Wilford could be found leading the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Salzburg Festival and several top London ensembles all at the same time. That gave him leverage in all of those places when negotiating to book the many singers, soloists and guest conductors that his firm represented.
But his power eventually waned as rival firms gained power and the industry changed, leaving his era a distant memory.
He could be a tough negotiator. “My client is the artist — not the Philharmonic, not the Metropolitan Opera, not anyone else,” Mr. Wilford said in a rare, unusually blunt interview with The Times in 1971. “I’m kind of a marriage broker, particularly with a conductor. And I am absolutely ruthless if it comes down to telling an orchestra to go to hell if I feel something is unfair to an artist of mine. I really don’t care because if I have an artist they want, they will have to book him.”
But he was also known for nurturing careers, and serving almost as a father figure to his favorite clients — including Mr. Levine, who was still a teenager when he first asked Mr. Wilford to become his manager. “He kept coming in,” Mr. Wilford recalled in an interview with The New Yorker in 1994. “ ‘Now?’ ‘No, no, keep going — get as much repertoire under your belt as you can. Wait until you’re around 27. Given your talent, when you do start your career it will go like a rocket, and the ride will be very fast.’ ”
Things went more or less according to plan: Mr. Levine was 27 when he made his debut at the Met conducting a performance of Puccini’s “Tosca” in 1971, which he later said he had been reluctant to do but was talked into by Mr. Wilford. The following year he was named principal conductor; a few years later, music director, and in 1983, artistic director.
Mr. Wilford’s power sometimes alarmed those who ran music institutions. Joseph Volpe, who became general manager of the Met in 1990, later wrote in his memoirs that Mr. Wilford “had, in effect, blackmailed the Met into naming Jimmy artistic director” with the threat that Mr. Levine would leave the company if he did not get the position. And in 1994, when Mr. Volpe fired the soprano Kathleen Battle, who was represented by Columbia Artists, for what the Met described at the time as her “unprofessional actions,” it was seen in some circles as a move to establish his independence from Mr. Wilford, who had strongly argued against her dismissal.
Curiously, Mr. Wilford’s path to the pinnacle of the classical music business began with silence: As a young manager, he introduced the mime Marcel Marceau to the United States. Mr. Wilford, who was born in Utah to a Greek father and a Mormon mother, was able to ride the tremendous success he had with Mr. Marceau to a career with Columbia Artists, where he was first hired to establish a theatrical division.
The company, which was founded in 1930, was a classical music powerhouse that was led for years by Arthur Judson, a radio pioneer who was a manager of leading artists, the second-largest investor in William S. Paley’s Columbia Broadcasting System, and, for a time, simultaneously the manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. It ran a major touring operation that took its artists all over the country, and at one point it claimed to manage nearly two-thirds of the top concert artists in America.
Mr. Wilford became the president of Columbia Artists in 1970 and held the post until 2000, when he stepped down but assumed the titles of chairman and chief executive, which he held until his death. The company, which moved to Columbus Circle, still represents many important artists but no longer holds the almost monopolistic grip it once had, as rival agencies have challenged it over the years and the industry has changed.
Mr. Wilford is survived by his wife, Sara, a granddaughter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She was previously married to the pianist Anthony di Bonaventura, who had been managed by Columbia Artists. Other survivors are children from his two earlier marriages: a son, Christopher, and a daughter, Diane Whiting.
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