Quita Chavez, who was Gramophone’s Editorial Manager from 1980 to 1984 and then Consultant to the Editorial Department, was one of those record-industry characters the like of which you simply no longer encounter. Passionate about music, particularly opera, she was what she would have described as a ‘record man’ (the term did not seem to allow for a gender-specific alternative). Despite her name, Quita was English through and through, and she spoke with an inimitable (though much imitated) accent that had its centre of gravity in London where she grew up and lived all her long life (she notched up her 100th birthday earlier this year).

Though possessing a heart of gold, she’d keep Gramophone’s panel on a short leash and her attention to detail was legendary – as were her hours (and her language)! She’d catch the first tube up to our offices in Harrow, always being at her desk shortly after dawn and frequently had to be restrained from ringing up contributors to query copy when most people were still emerging from sleep.

I remember, shortly after joining Gramophone’s editorial staff in 1985, being sent a ‘white label’ LP of a live Furtwängler Beethoven Ninth recorded in London’s Queen’s Hall in May 1937 when the Berlin Philharmonic were on tour. Quita had been at the concert, and I soon realised that here was someone who was not only passionate about music, but had heard them all.

As a 19 year old, she had her first encounter with The Gramophone as a correspondent commenting with typical trenchancy on the inferiority of American music papers. ‘The majority of the said critics’ she wrote, ’seem more concerned in describing the scenery, dresses and other unmusical things. Never can one divine anything about the singers' technique, or their actual voices. Instead, one gets a full account of Madame So-and-so's lovely figure, good looks, and stunning gowns. One of the most common statements made regarding a certain singer is "no adjective can be found to describe”. Now how can the standard of her voice be judged from that remark!’

In 1940 she contributed a remarkable survey of recordings of Wagner’s Ring cycle to The Gramophone (she was a life-long Wagnerite). The magazine’s celebrated vocal authority, John Steane, later recalled that Quita ‘at Covent Garden on pre-war summer nights, having queued for the gallery, drank deep at the fountains of vocal glory: Lehmann, Leider and Lemnitz were her heroines, Martinelli, Janssen, Kipnis among the heroes.’

She worked at one of London’s legendary record shops, EMG, then in the publicity department at Decca, and for the newly emerging company of Philips. In 1961 she joined the editorial department of The Gramophone. When CBS started as an independent company in the UK she went to them, lured there by Maurice Oberstein (who would finish his career as the global head of PolyGram) and later she had a second spell with Philips (by then part of PolyGram), leaving in 1980.

She was a marvellous hostess whose dinner parties would always start with one or two of her ‘blockbuster’ gin and tonics, and she’d often have some of her musician friends round – Carlo Maria Giulini once shocked her by watering down his wine (the quality of which was always very fine – and served in copious quantity). For Quita, the perfect evening was an opera at Covent Garden followed by dinner at The Ivy, over which there would be much 'chewing of the cud' (a favourite Chavezian bon mot) about the quality (or otherwise) of the singing. James Jolly