This is taken from The Times, April 10, 2007:

John Lade
BBC music presenter whose genius lay in the discovery of little-known gems

The BBC is currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of its venerable Saturday morning programme devoted to music on record, now on Radio 3. John Lade was the founder of Record Review in 1957, and continued as its weekly presenter for the next 30 years.

By that time the tide of the CD was advancing. This had already prompted Lade’s inauguration of the comparative review, ideally suited to radio, which he called “Building a Library”, a title that continues in the extended Saturday morning broadcast so popular today.

John Lade was born in 1917, the only child of a First World War widowed mother. She recognised his musical gift and persuaded him to undertake a teachers’ training course at the College of St Mark and St John, Chelsea. This led to him teaching at Margate and, later, St Mary Cray.

He was then able to study at Trinity College of Music, but this was interrupted by war service in the Pay Corps. He returned to his studies after the war. More school teaching followed, and he gave evening classes in music.

From the experience of these, he decided to approach the BBC, suggesting the broadcasting of enticing, simple yet little-known piano pieces of quality. This idea was taken up by Children’s Hour and became the first step to his BBC career.

Lade now attracted the attention of Anna Instone and Julian Herbage and began contributing to their long-running Music Magazine Sunday programme. An instinct for the little-known gem was perhaps the core of John Lade’s quality.

Running his own programme, he did not allow himself to be swamped by weekly doses of opera, imposing symphonic poems and flamboyant concertos. Contributors prone to gush over grandiose music would still be given useful suggestions, unaware that this was not at all their producer’s preferred pasture.

The fragile sound of the clavichord was, rather, his metier. Before embarking on his broadcasting career he had chanced to meet Safford Cape, director of Pro Musica Antiqua, a formative ensemble in the introduction to Britain of early music. Cape’s father-in-law was the eminent Belgian scholar, Charles van den Borren, with whom Lade studied. It was mainly on the Continent that he then performed, principally the music of the 17th and 18th centuries. He also studied with the celebrated organist and composer Flor Peeters.

If there was a disappointment in his life, it was that these, the most exciting of his earlier days, never led to fulfilment as performer and scholar. Yet his gifts found their outlet in his BBC career.

Lade was frequently urged to record his vivid memories. Regretfully, he never did.

His wife, Susan, predeceased him. He is survived by his daughter.

John Lade, musician and broadcaster, was born on April 8, 1917. He died on March 18, 2007, aged 89