VISI Faculty: Graham Johnson
Graham
Johnson is recognised as one of the world’s leading vocal pianists.
Born in Rhodesia, he came to London to study in 1967. After leaving the
Royal Academy of Music his teachers included Gerald Moore and Geoffrey
Parsons. In 1972 he was the official pianist at Peter Pears' first master classes
at The Maltings, which brought him into contact with Benjamin Britten – a
link which strengthened his interest in the genre of song.
In 1976 he formed the Songmakers’ Almanac to explore neglected areas of piano-vocal music; the founder singers were Dame Felicity Lott, Ann Murray DBE, Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Richard Jackson — artists with whom he has established long and fruitful collaborations both on the concert platform and the recording studio. Some two hundred and fifty Songmakers’ programmes were presented over the years. Graham Johnson has accompanied such distinguished singers as Sir Thomas Allen, Victoria de los Angeles, Elly Ameling, Arleen Auger, Brigitte Fassbaender, Matthias Goerne, Thomas Hampson, Simon Keenlyside, Philip Langridge, Serge Leiferkus, Edith Mathis, Lucia Popp, Christoph Prégardien, Dame Margaret Price, Thomas Quastoff, Dorothea Röschmann, Kate Royal, Peter Schreier, Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Sarah Walker.
His relationship with the Wigmore Hall is a special one. He devised and accompanied concerts in the hall’s re-opening series in 1992, and in its centenary celebrations in 2001. He has been Chairman of the jury for the Wigmore Hall Song Competition since its inception. He is Senior Professor of Accompaniment at the Guildhall School of Music and has led a biennial scheme for Young Songmakers since 1985. He has had a long and fruitful link with Ted Perry and Hyperion Records for whom he has devised and accompanied a set of complete Schubert Lieder on 37 discs, a milestone in the history of recording. A complete Schumann series is halfway completed, and there is an ongoing French Song series where the complete songs of such composers as Chausson, Chabrier and Fauré are either already available, or in preparation. All these discs are issued with Graham Johnson’s own programme notes which set new standards for CD annotations. Graham has also recorded for Sony, BMG, Harmonia Mundi, Forlane, EMI and DGG. Awards include the Gramophone solo vocal award in 1989 (with Dame Janet Baker), 1996 (Die schone Müllerin with Ian Bostridge), 1997 (for the inauguration of the Schumann series with Christine Schäfer) and 2001 (with Magdalena Kozena). He was The Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Year in 1998; in June 2000 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He is author of The Songmakers’ Almanac; Twenty years of recitals in London, The French Song Companion for OUP (2000) and The Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten (Guildhall 2003). He was made an OBE in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours list and in 2002 he was created Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Government.
Photo: Clive Barda
Graham Johnson Writes About VISI:
Talk mediates, differentiates, elucidates and consoles: we use words,
however imprecisely, to talk about love and death because talk, it seems,
we must. We also use and surely must use words to talk about music”
Joseph Kerman
When a great musicologist admits that he needs words, as much as analytical diagrams, to discuss the keyboard music of Bach, how much more would he have to agree that words are obligatory when we discuss music with words: the work of the great poets takes us halfway into that realm of mysterious alchemy where the two conjoin, and it is up to us performers to do the rest. When the words set by the composer are in our mother tongue, we have an inestimable intellectual and emotional advantage, and so does our audience. And all this before a note of music has been sung or played!
The artists who will take part in the events celebrating the opening of VISI are dedicated to the making of music; but we also believe that part of the joy of programming songs in English in a very special forum like VISI is that we can talk about the songs, and around them and behind them, as if we were holding precious artefacts up to the light at every angle, the better to study their every facet. There are riches here for the taking – from the British Isles itself, from North America and from a number of composers of other nationalities who chose to set English words. Every song has two parents – the poet and the composer, and the poet’s work, printed on the page as an inspiration to the composer, always came first.
There is much to discuss from the performing point of view, of course: questions of singing and playing, of tempo and emphasis, of balance and proportion. We will be working on all these things at VISI in public master classes, they are the subject of our daily devotions. But it is equally exciting to discuss what the poet meant, what the composer believed he meant, what we believe the poet meant (if there is a difference). And once we enter that dialogue, we find ourselves in a rich world of the humanities, where history and sociology are part and parcel of the musical experience. We soon discover that each song is a time capsule with messages within for us to decipher; these far transcend the black and white dots of printed musical notation, although it is the addition of music which lifts and universalises the words to a point where the lyrics are loved, even by those who do not speak English well. We invite you to open these time capsules in our company whatever your background or nationality.
On the other hand, if you do happen to speak English fluently, and if great poetry means something to you, much will seem immediate and familiar. The music will seem to be an additional blessing, an abundance heaped on something already abundant in its own right. We are bursting with pride about this music that it is our life’s work to advocate and defend; we welcome you into VISI to partake of a hidden heritage that belongs every bit as much to non-musicians of a poetic disposition as to those with singing voices and instrumental talent.