Maurice Millward (1931-2026)

Maurice Millward – Presto Music owner 2001-2017

A lifelong love of music

I first met Maurice Millward in 2001, when he interviewed me to take over the running of his small classical CD shop in Leamington Spa. He was then a recently retired businessman who had found himself owner of a business with an uncertain future, but he was a passionate classical music lover who was determined to do everything he could to make it work.  

Maurice died last week at the age of 94. During the last twenty‑five years of his life I was privileged to work with him, talk with him and share many lunches with him, usually accompanied by red wine and a pudding – his two favourite courses. This is not just an obituary but a personal tribute to a man whose vision shaped Presto Music and who played a quiet but significant role in the wider musical community.

From market research to music retail

Maurice began his working life in advertising research. In 1969 he met Gordon Brown (not the same Gordon Brown who would later become British Prime Minister) while working at General Foods and together they set up a research company in Leamington Spa four years later. The firm, named Millward Brown, pioneered continuous tracking studies and built an international reputation. By 1985 it had expanded into the United States and Europe. In 1989 Maurice and Gordon sold the company to WPP; Millward Brown subsequently became part of WPP’s Kantar group. Maurice stepped back from the business in 1992 to focus on other interests, especially music.

His passion for music was not a hobby but a conviction that music should be accessible to everyone. When the owners of Presto Classical (as it then was) decided to retire in 2001, he was encouraged by local friends to step in and save it. The shop sold only CDs and I believe he was motivated to take it on both by wanting to maintain somewhere local for him to continue buying his own CDs, but also by a firm belief that a town should have a classical music shop where people could discover recordings, and subsequently also explore sheet music and instruments.

Maurice was also a visionary: despite the dot‑com bubble having just burst, he saw the internet’s potential. He persuaded his friend David Ferrer to build an online store. The first Presto website went live in August 2001 and received a mighty eight orders in the remainder of that year! Despite the slow start, the timing proved perfect – David would be joined a few years later by his son Rob - and we were on our way to building the online side of the business into what it has become today. 

Maurice recognised that a business needed people as much as ideas, and he was prepared to take chances on them. Later in 2001 he appointed me as manager, despite worrying that I was “too young” and had little (no) management experience! I will be forever grateful for his faith in me. We moved the shop to Park Street in 2002, expanded into sheet music and musical instruments and built an offering that now includes audio and sheet music downloads and of course music streaming.

Working with Maurice – breakfast, red wine and vigorous debate

Although Maurice never ‘worked’ in the business, nor drew a salary, he was a constant presence. We met regularly, usually over breakfast or lunch. He genuinely loved food (our lunches typically involved both pudding and red wine), but conversation always centred on Presto. Many of our website innovations were born over the dining‑table. One day, for example, we mused about how useful it would be if customers could compare all available recordings of a given work. Six months later our “work” pages appeared, with links from each composer page, and they remain one of the site’s most‑used features.

Maurice enjoyed a good argument. We often disagreed, sometimes for hours, before resolving our differences by debating whether he or I was more representative of our “typical” customer – he usually won! Yet our discussions were always constructive, and he backed me wholeheartedly even when the business took time to become profitable. Over more than a decade Presto moved premises three times and expanded into new product categories and digital services; through all this he continued to invest and support the team.

A generous patron of music

Maurice’s support for music extended far beyond Presto. He believed profoundly in enabling musicians and organisations. He provided significant philanthropic support to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) and sponsored the seat of Chris Yates, the CBSO’s Principal Viola (his favourite instrument in the orchestra). He also funded concerts at Music in the Round in Sheffield and at Leamington Music.

Maurice’s love of music led him to commission new works from Leamington composer Howard Skempton. This started in 2009 with his viola concerto Only the Sound Remains (written for Chris Yates) and was followed in 2015 by a setting of Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner  - a substantial work for voice and chamber ensemble, written for baritone Roderick Williams and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

These were released together on the label NMC in 2017, and were followed by a setting of D. H. Lawrence’s Man and Bat, again for Roderick Williams, this time with Ensemble 360, which was subsequently released on First Hand Records. These commissions show the depth of his commitment: he wanted to add new repertoire to the world and to give performers opportunities to shine.

Maurice also supported Glyndebourne and I recall his pride in being a founder member of the new opera house. Each year he invited my wife and me to join him, his wife Sheila (and generally two-to-four other friends) for an opera at Glyndebourne – always with dinner and an overnight stay included. He relished sharing the music, the food and the occasion, along with hearty discussion (and disagreements!) over the merits (or not) of the staging and production of the given performance. I got to know his late wife Sheila (an accomplished artist) through these occasions, and witnessed first-hand the joy and deep love which they shared, even when engaged in a raging argument over the artistic merits of the performance!

Remembering Maurice

Maurice simply loved music and wanted others to enjoy it too. Many of the improvements we made at Presto – from curated composer pages to our now‑ubiquitous work pages – stemmed from his curiosity and his insistence that we could always do better.

In the last twenty-five years I saw Maurice in many guises: shrewd businessman, indulgent host, visionary patron and, above all, a friend who cared deeply about people and music. It was music that brought him out of retirement; music that drew him to support orchestras, festivals and composers; and music that kept him engaged and excited well into his nineties.

Presto Music exists today because a man with a lifelong love of music refused to let a shop close and because he believed that the internet could connect people with art. I miss our lunches, our debates and his dry humour – but most of all I will miss the sheer delight he took in every new piece of music he encountered.

Maurice is survived by his three daughters, two sons and numerous grandchildren. They, and all of us who knew him, have lost a generous spirit; the world of music has lost a quiet but passionate champion, but his life has most definitely been one well lived, and for that I’ll be raising a glass of red wine tonight.