Talking to Austrian tenor Daniel Johannsen about the Evangelist role, historically informed performance and the Romantic Lied

Photo: Anette Friedel

On March 25th 2020, I had the pleasure of talking to Daniel Johannsen at his home in Vienna. Born in 1978, the Austrian tenor is one of the most sought-after Evangelists and Bach interpreters of his generation. In addition to church music, he studied vocal arts with Margit Klaushofer and Robert Holl in Vienna, participating in master classes with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Nicolai Gedda and Christa Ludwig. He was a prize-winner at the Bach-, Schumann-, Mozart-, Hilde Zadek- and Wigmore Hall Competitions. Since his debut in 1998, Daniel Johannsen has appeared as a concert-, Lieder- and opera singer, taking him to the major musical centres of Europe, North America, Japan and the Middle East, where he sings works from every period. A lyric tenor, he sings the entire range of German repertoire in addition to English and French compositions. Numerous recordings, radio- and television broadcasts continue to document his creative output.

PH: Oh, I see you have a beautiful historic piano!

DJ: This is my “first aid kit”. It is an 1872 piano built by Carl Rönisch, Dresden and in perfect condition.

PH: So, you also have an interest in historic keyboard instruments.

DJ: Yes. German early keyboard specialist Christoph Hammer is “to blame” for my craze for period pianos. I have also been interested in period organs and harpsichords.  I want to be a prophet and a messenger, telling people that there are still lots of period instruments in collections or in private properties. (But newly-built instruments are also to be used, as they have the benefit of new and reliable materials, yet still built to the proportions of the old instruments.) This Carl Rönisch is just right for the music of Hugo Wolf. Hugo Wolf composed in the 1880s, so a piano from 1872 is literally what people would have had in their salons at that time. It’s so lovely to have this sound, especially for those big Wolf elegiac piano introductions and interludes. This piano makes performing them all so easy and logical and it holds its pitch very well. Unlike trying to accompany Schubert’s “Heidenröslein” (Hedge Rose) on a large concert grand, this is a piano where you can really let go. Although it has punch, it is never too loud. Yes, I am definitely for period pianos and my next CD, which will feature Wolf songs, with lots of texts by Mörike, Eichendorff and Goethe, will be recorded with my own piano. The pianist will be Andreas Fröschl, a very gifted German pianist now living in Vienna. I met him at a Schubertiade run by my teacher Robert Holl in Landshut, Bavaria. (Andreas Fröschl comes from there). We had one rehearsal and then a concert; I was so amazed at what he did with such tricky Schubert ensemble pieces as “Der Hochzeitsbraten” (The Wedding Roast). Andreas also fell in love with the Rönisch piano, although he doesn’t play period pianos at all, but he sat down at this 148-year-old piano and was amazed at how everything was at once so articulate.

PH: Where did you start your early music training?

DJ:  I was at a grammar school in my home region of Burgenland, the easternmost part of Austria, bordering on Hungary; till 1989, Burgenland was the easternmost part of the western world. The iron curtain was only 30 kilometres away. I still remember seeing the towers and barbed wire - a lethal zone between two empires. 

PH: I understand you trained as a church musician. 

DJ: Yes.  I started with piano and organ and took studies in church music. By the age of 11 or 12, I was already playing the organ at church (I am the son of a Lutheran vicar), accompanying services with my father. In addition to my school life, I attended a kind of music academy; the Graz Musikhochschule had a branch in this lovely little Burgenland town of Oberschützen, where I was at school. At age 17, before my A-levels, I started to study organ and church music, continuing in Vienna, graduating in 1999 with a B Diploma in church music. 

PH: So how did you get into professional singing? Who were the singers who influenced you?

DJ: I was studying vocal skills with Margit Klaushofer; this was an important subject for a career as a church musician and choir conductor.  Margit Klaushofer, the most important voice teacher I had, said I must become a singer. Before she proposed I put all my energies into making a career of singing, I had not been fond of the idea because of all the second-rate opera singers I had met singing oratorios in the villages and small towns in my home county, with their untamed vibrato and temperamental behaviour. If this was how singers functioned, it was just mad. That is how I saw singers until I met Robert Holl. What a different kind of person he was! I met Fischer-Dieskau, I met Nicolai Gedda, I met Christa Ludwig. These were singers of a much earlier generation. In their hands, I was like clay on a potter’s wheel.  This makes me very grateful because, when I met Fischer-Dieskau in 2004, he was 79 and still such a strong person. He stood behind me and sang all these Hugo Wolf songs together with me AND in tenor range! I was melting away in awe and ecstasy. It was only a year later that he broke his shoulder and he was no longer the same person. How lucky I was to have met him in the last year of his strength and professional life. This is the grace of God.

PH: When did you actually start working as a solo singer?

DJ: Well, right from the beginning of my church music studies, I knew about my vocal qualities. I had sung Schütz Passions and 17th century repertoire when only 19 or 20 years old. In fact, I debuted in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio even before I started my vocal studies. In 1998 and sang the Evangelist in my first three cantatas as a church music student. The difference was that, even as a solo-singing church musician, I still had not considered making my living as a vocal soloist. This only became clear in my early 20s, when I won 2^nd Prize at the XIII International Bach Competition in Leipzig in 2002. It was only then, at 24, after I had won a silver medal and artists such as Peter Schreier claimed I was a good Bach singer, that it was time for me to accept the fact that I would have a career as a solo singer, would live off it and would be fully determined and dedicated to it. 

PH: You are known for much singing of Bach works.

DJ: Yes. I can say that there is no month of my life without Bach and there are months when there is not a single week in my life without Bach. Isn’t that beautiful! Singing all those cantatas!  Now, absolutely and objectively speaking, the Evangelist role is the best I can give. With all my love for Schubert and for Mozart opera, if I really have to decide on one focus, it is the Evangelist in the St. Matthew and St. John Passions. And I don’t tire from performing them. You know, in 2015, when I sang the St. John Passion with the Israel Camerata Jerusalem under Avner Biron, with Peter Harvey as Christus and a Swiss choir, I had five days in a row of singing the complete tenor part - the Evangelist and the two arias - and at 440 pitch (quite different to singing at 415) - and I was sound; I was tired but felt well. Before the last concert of the run, which was in Jerusalem, I went up to the Mount of Olives. Actually, I sang my first St. Matthew Passion in Jerusalem; it was in the 2004 Israel Festival. I was an aria singer. It was with Hermann Max and the Rheinische Kantorei.  I have always seen this as an omen of my Evangelist career. Today, I am honoured to be singing with both the Swiss Project - the J.S.Bach Foundation - and the Netherlands Bach Society’s “All of Bach” Project. Last year, I sang two concerts with the latter group under Philippe Herreweghe. The settings of the NBS’s videos are very beautiful, with the chiaroscuro effects of light. I love those Calvinist-style Dutch churches and the big Dutch organs. In Groningen, for example, they have built the podium right under the organ. The organ at St. Martin’s Church is one of the most famous in the Netherlands. I did the St. John Passion and the Christmas Oratorio there; such a moving setting!

PH: Where do you stand regarding the early music historically informed performance movement?

DJ: Well, I am fully a part of it. I do sing the Bach B-minor Mass with eight singers and his cantatas with four people. Single-part scoring suits many pieces, such as “Actus Tragicus” BWV 106 and for all the trickiest Bach pieces of running 16th-note polyphony. Done by a Bach choral society, it is impressive, but it will sound like thick dough and lack the fine detail. And I am not an admirer of performing these pieces as fast as possible! Actually, at 41, I realize I don’t have the fast tempi I had at 25, when I was proud of my coloratura and speed. My good friend, the late German conductor Enoch zu Guttenberg, a founder of the Orchester der KlangVerwaltung (Orchestra of the Sound Administration) was somewhat of the tradition of Karl Richter, meaning the full Romantic orchestra, but he did not adopt the thick, slow and sticky manner of Karl Richter. However, he was very big on effects. When he did "Wahrlich, dieser ist Gottes Sohn Gewesen” (Truly, this was the Son of God) from the St. Matthew Passion, it was like an earthquake. I have fallen in love with his idea as well. So, I am in the happy position of being able to say: “If there is an idea and a concept, I can be like a chameleon and find myself either in a performance of 300 people or with 40 people (i.e. 40 including choir and orchestra). I normally don’t have trouble with high pitch or with lower pitch. There are so many German choral societies that use 440 pitch, not working with period instruments. One should really be able to address all traditions. But there are some approaches that are bizarre in their choice of tempi, for example, in which I refuse to take part. I am also not an English-style Evangelist and will never sing the role in that manner ...not my idea or aesthetic. At first, I was disappointed not to be singing in the UK, but now accept it as I am a continental singer.  

PH: Would you like to talk about your connection with Schubert’s music?

DJ: Yes. Schubert is really one of my first loves. For me, his life and biography are the most amazing in the whole of music history. Schubert composed for 18 of the 31 years of his lifetime (he did not start writing music at age 5, as did Mozart and Mendelssohn); he was almost adolescent when he started composing.  Otto Erich Deutsch, who compiled the first comprehensive catalogue of Franz Schubert's compositions, said that eighteen years of a lifetime would not be sufficient for one to only copy all the music Franz Schubert wrote! And Schubert had such neat handwriting (Beethoven’s is hieroglyphic!) For me, Schubert is the greatest musician who has ever lived and composed in Vienna. He is the most Viennese composer, even more so than Johann Strauss or Franz Lehar. Hardly any other music causes me to shed tears as do his Octet or the last string quartet (the G-major). By the way, when I want to give myself a treat, I only listen to chamber music, not vocal music. For me, Schubert’s chamber music is the finest of the genre - the best string quartet, the best piano trio, the best octet, the best quintet, all beyond everything else. I like to put it this way: what is Schubert’s “Meterware” (normal production) would be considered a once-in-a-lifetime gem of Viennese grade-B and grade-C contemporaries of his, such as Aßmayer or Randhartinger. As to the depth of content of his songs, it is “prima la parola e poi la musica” (first the words and then the music). This is what led Franz Schubert to music. Even at the height of his sickness, when he was in hospital due to syphilis, he read and read - he read poetry, also poems written by his friends, given to him with the ink not yet dry, immediately sitting down to compose settings of them.

PH: I would like to hear more about your recently-issued Schubert disc.

DJ: I recorded “Lieder Ohnegleichen” (Songs without Equal) - with pianist Christoph Hammer. I chose all the songs. But, being a singer in constant action and reaction with pianists, many of the songs were suggested to me by different pianists. For example, “Berthas Lied in der Nacht” (Bertha’s Night Song) was suggested by Charles Spencer, with whom I had two very beautiful Lieder evenings. I owe “Die Nachthymne” (Hymn to the Night) to Graham Johnson. We performed it at the 2014 Oxford Lieder Festival. It was actually a two-and-a-half-hour lecture-recital focusing on Schubert in 1816, with a selection of his works written from January to December of that year. Graham Johnson is just marvellous; I can only recommend his extensive 6000-page “Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs” (Yale University Press). I think if you read this, you will know everything about Schubert songs. Regarding our Schubert disc, all the songs on the disc are taken from my own “treasure box”. Except for three of the songs, all date from Deutsch 800 and on, written in the last one and a half or two years of Schubert’s life, representing the most mature Schubert. One of my all-time favourites is “Im Frühling” (In Spring). I have told people that if this were the only Schubert song (a nightmarish idea), a person finding this single song would have to say “Who was this person, setting a poem to a theme and variations?” This was composed in heaven...incredible. Poet Ernst Schulze, who died young following a desperate love affair, was lucky to be placed on Parnassus on the wings of Franz Schubert with this beautiful song. There are quite a few beautiful Ernst Schulze Schubert songs...ah, beautiful songs. How lucky it was that these newly-printed books of poetry were brought to Schubert by his friends. They knew he was like a magnet for these things. He wrote the songs when still under the first, fresh impression of reading; he would then pace around reciting their elevated language aloud in a manner we no longer recite poems, in a singing way, as they did before the days of microphones. To us nowadays, reading them in this way would sound stupid, reminding one of the mannerism of dictators and politicians, but it represented a kind of intertwining of the poetry, music-making and the art of recitation, these being part and parcel of public music and artistic performance. These all worked together so well, combining music and the arts, all part of 19th century bourgeois culture.  For those of this class, it was so normal to do this. Perhaps this corona crisis will re-establish these old skills and traditions.

Interestingly, on my Schubert disc, I did not choose many poems written by the composer’s circle of friends. I completely omitted his some-47 settings of poems of Johann Mayrhofer, one of his truest friends. I thought that many other collections and recordings had featured these Greek mythology settings.  But I have fallen so much in love with the settings of Johann Gabriel Seidl and have given much space on the CD to songs written to his poems. For me, Seidl is the most important poet of Biedermeier Vienna, of the Metternich era. Relevant to our times (but for different reasons), he deals with our being requested to stay at home, to stay within the walls “Ihr lieben Mauern, hold und traut, Die ihr mich kühl umschließt” (“Dear, familiar walls, you enclose me within your coolness” - from “Am Fenster” - “At the Window”, translation Richard Wigmore.) This is one of the songs dearest to me. You can learn so much about people’s emotions at the time of Metternich’s Spitzelstaat, with all his secret police and agents around all the time. Seidl tells us so much about how it felt to be inside the home, to sense relief, perhaps not publicly but in the confines of the private home, where you could still give expression to your soul, all your feelings and political ideas, if not said aloud but told silently in the privacy of your own room. So, at times, we also need to stay in our own rooms. We can find much solace and inspiration in these Seidl texts. 

PH: Would you like to talk about your recording career up to now?

DJ: Yes. Well, recording is always very special if you have a good recording engineer and sound master. The latter is like a singing teacher.  He is someone who gives you such good feedback. For ten years, I have been working with Stefan Ritzentaler, the sound master of J.S. Bach Foundation. We are such a good match. Before he talks, I can already figure out what he is going to suggest, what to do better on the next take. To be used to the microphone is of great benefit and importance. It is something that is not a part of normal music-making. This experience is something I don’t want to miss out on. I have many recording ideas for the whole of my remaining career and for bigger labels. I have recorded for Sony Music, for Harmonia Mundi, for Carus - very appealing labels - but even with some no-name labels, I have had very fulfilling and satisfying recording work. I love it very much and I think I am feeling comfortable with it by now; I can do it for hours on end and it all feels “in place”, not tiring, just polished. For “Lieder Ohnegleichen”, we had recording sessions of four and five hours. In the best times and moments of recording, I can imagine my audience being present, in front of me, even when I am alone in the recording booth or in an empty hall. 

PH: Do you teach?

DJ: Yes. The more the better. Teaching also clarifies things for me! Not yet having a position at a college or a conservatory, I have private pupils and think that, as this coronavirus crisis continues, I will start teaching on Skype. Two years ago, I was very honoured to be approached by Ulf Bästlein, a professor from the vocal department of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, (where I had originally studied church music), asking me whether I would like to apply for an adjunct professorship there. So, I did apply and ended up being one of the ten people chosen to take the teaching audition, after which I was informed that I was among the first four. I felt very touched and honoured and applied for it. I feel the time has come to enter academic musical life. What interests me is teaching people from many different places the art of interpretation - Bach, Schubert, many styles of German music and other traditions. It is important they are informed of what lies behind the music -  about painting, other arts - all constitutional to understanding, for example, certain gestures of Baroque music only explained if you know about Baroque dance, Baroque iconography and how people are depicted, in order to know how they sang, to be able to imagine how  this music sounded. For me, this is a whole package, to be a part of all the arts, to enjoy Baroque- and Classical architecture, to know what the churches, opera houses and concert halls were like, where the works were first- or regularly performed. It is then easier to understand how powerfully one should sing, how much intensity there was in the voice. That is the focus I would prefer rather than teaching voice students singing technique from scratch. I’m not so patient or into the minutest detail. And there is my library at hand, books up to the ceiling, as you can see - including books from the 18th century like those by Mattheson or Quantz or Praetorius and all the other important first early musicology books. I really like reading them now and then. Reading what they wrote belongs to the informed singer, the informed musician - you have to know a few things in order to enjoy the second and third layers below the aesthetic surface of a piece of music. 

PH: Do you write music?

DJ: I used to compose a little. On my web page, my very vintage-style web page from 2003, there are a few pieces I wrote - a six-part choral motet and a few other things. I liked it. I also liked doing settings. When I was an organist, I tried to be very correct, using no parallel 5ths and 8ths, to create a fully precise four-part setting of a chorale. But I don’t compose any more.

PH: Do you write about music?

DJ: Yes. When I write on Facebook, when trying to explain my approach towards this or that. There was the Record Challenge of October 2019, where I wrote about eight discs - four of the texts were in English and four in German. And there just might be an unwritten music novel in my head that will become a reality one day.

PH: Do you edit?

DJ: Well, on the smallest scale, as when I am looking for something from the Düben Collection, the famous collection of the Uppsala University library, where there are loads of 17th century works. Sometimes I select a work that is only in manuscript form and I put it through my computer music program to make a small edition for performance on Petrucci, but these I do for my own use and not for publishing.  

PH: What is your focus at the moment?

DJ: Going back to my piano and the Hugo Wolf songs, I think that what I really want to do at the moment is to get the Romantic impact and the Romantic power of my voice sounding in the manner of these songs. I am trying to do a lot of this. Maybe there is some Romantic opera for me to perform. We haven’t yet spoken about opera.

PH: So, let’s talk about opera.

DJ: Normally, I feel 100% comfortable with Mozart and Handel opera - with Tamino, with Belmonte, with Ferrando. These are perfect for my voice. I will shortly be performing in “Idomeneo”, when I am asked. And then, of course, there is much 20th century opera. I like Benjamin Britten. “Albert Herring” used to be my favourite opera role and I like the three church parables (especially “The Prodigal Son”) very much. I want to do Peter Quint in “The Turn of the Screw” and one fine day I want to be a Peter Grimes and a Captain Vere in “Billy Budd”. These are really opera roles I have a certain aspiration to do, but they are still a few horse powers away from my current repertoire. 

As to being on the opera stage, there is a feeling of freedom and laissez-faire which you only have when you do opera; in the concert hall, this Friday-to-Sunday period of making concert music is always so strict, without a millimetre of spare time, because you have to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse properly and not waste time...exhausting. But when you do opera, you have these six or seven weeks and it is a totally different approach. Of course, you have to be diligent and wise and you mustn’t waste time there, either, but you have more time and you can try more ideas. And then you have these performances and there is a very interesting discovery I have made. There are two possibilities in the opera: you can be having a bad day, you feel awful, you feel weak and you have to make such an effort to go to the theatre and get on stage. You are then surrounded by fully motivated colleagues and a wonderful conductor and, all of a sudden, your colleagues take you with them and, even if you are a bit shaky on the first aria, by the last aria you are in such good shape that the audience will be shouting. This is a beautiful thing I have learnt about opera performance. The other experience is this: you are fully motivated, you feel you are in great shape, you come to the opera house and go on stage and have a kind of Freudian dream (you want to run, but everything there is happening in slow motion): your colleagues are so lacking in energy, the ensembles are uninspired, nothing works, but you decide you have to find your place in this mess and get on with it. The latter does happen, perhaps infrequently, but it can. This is what you learn about opera - that you are part of such a big operation, with so many powers sharing and joined in one place and from all the arts. It’s good. I think my Evangelist has benefited a lot from my Tamino and, of course, my Tamino is still benefiting from my Evangelist. 

PH: The coronavirus restrictions must have brought your performances to a standstill.

DJ: Yes. I should have been in Groningen this Good Friday, but, of course, everything is cancelled, as is the mid-May Schubertiade project near Utrecht. What I will so much miss is the act of standing in front of an audience and delivering the music to the people. You know, I do between 80 and 90 performances a year...am fully into concert life. But, as of next week, I hope to have all my concerts on YouTube.

PH: When it’s not music, what interests you?

DJ: Nature...learning about what life is about from nature, that there is a beginning each and every year, especially now that spring is so welcome, so desperately awakened. With the recent freeze here, the blossoms recently out could die. So, I like nature and all sports taking place in nature. I jog. Also, reading, certainly...all different kinds of books and literature, I like the culinary arts and engage in much social contact by email and such time-consuming activities as Facebook. But you also need time just to think. I have experienced this even in non-corona times: you have to have some hours in the week to sit down and just think, to have your idle ideas and have your idle hours, because the inspiration for ideas for Lieder evenings, for concert projects, for whom to contact or what to start again, comes with quiet thought. The artistic person, regardless of whether he is a painter, sculptor, actor, a singer or a writer, needs to have these hours - leisure time for the muses to visit. 

PH: Daniel, thank you so much for your time and for sharing so many of your ideas and experiences. 

Talking to Maestro Paul McCreesh about his career, period instrument performance, new music and cultural education for young people

 Paul McCreesh (courtesy Gabrieli Consort)

On January 24th 2020, I had the honour of talking to Paul McCreesh at the Dan Hotel Eilat, where Maestro McCreesh conducted one of the concerts of the Eilat Chamber Music Festival. With a strong reputation in the opera house and as a conductor of many of the major orchestras and choirs across the globe, Paul McCreesh (UK) is  well-known as founder and artistic director of the Gabrieli Consort & Players. He is also enthusiastic about working with young musicians and broadening the public’s access to classical music.

PH: Maestro McCreesh, I see your repertoire includes a large selection of British music. Is this of your own choosing?

P.McC: You are probably referring to a recent production we did to celebrate English coronation music, where, of course, there is a strong English bent. At the same time, there is a tendency for a little bit of “institutionalized racism” in the music business, where you tend to end up being asked to conduct Sibelius if you are Finnish and to be asked to conduct a lot of Elgar, Walton and Britten if you are British. But, for me, it is all good music, great music. With Gabrieli, I also particularly love doing Purcell and always have done; it has been a part of my repertoire for thirty years. But, equally well, we perform Handel and Bach; my repertoire is very wide.

PH: Did you start your musical involvement in the typically British tradition of cathedral boys’ choirs?

P.McC: Absolutely not. It’s a bit of a joke, but in Britain I think I am almost unique to have come to professional music as a conductor, and particularly a conductor who spends a lot of time working in choral music, not having come through that tradition, that of choirboy singing in cathedrals or at King’s or whatever, then off to private school, thence Oxford or Cambridge. - the traditional route for British conductors. That was never my educational process and, even to this day. I think one day I will wake up and this will all have been some kind of dream. Of course, in the choral world, I have worked with so many singers who have been through that educational process. But, because of my very different background, I think I bring a slightly different perspective to the music.

When I talk about cultural opportunity, I understand that from the hunger of a kid who did not have great opportunity and who had to fight. It is a little harder than for those who have just glided through life on that conveyer be it of cultural production that creates the sort of musician that we have in England  - often extremely technically well-versed  (and I am the first to praise the excellence of that system producing good musicians in general) - but the cost of that system  is that it is a very small percentage of people who are actually involved in music, and that is a pity.   

PH: Do you come from a musical family?

P.McC: Not especially. My mother’s family was interested in music as amateurs and my father less so, although he has come to be interested in music through his children. I was brought up in what now seems to have been a slightly better age for music education, where it was possible to learn ‘cello at school, where at least we had many school orchestras, school choirs and local authority choirs. Unfortunately, that situation is no longer the case in the UK. 

PH: What changes have occurred? How do you see today’s music education?

P.McC: Music is becoming more and more a pursuit of the middle classes and of the privately educated. I think this is a real tragedy and, as I get older, I spend most of my time fighting very hard, both working with young musicians and with young choirs, particularly trying to work in culturally disadvantaged areas. I am trying to spread the message that young people are passionately interested in culture...if it is well taught and part of their curriculum. The problem is that so much of our cultural education consists effectively of one-off projects. It’s interesting when you look at many symphony orchestras and opera companies; we all have education programs and it is fantastic that we do that work, but it can never substitute core, classroom-based music teaching. The latter is the only way one can ensure that every child has the opportunity and that there can be a developmental process in music education. It should not be just a little ornament on the Christmas tree that you take off once or twice a year and eat the chocolate. For me, that is absolutely fundamental.

PH: How did you get to conducting?

P.McC: Sheer lunacy of youth, bloody-mindedness and arrogance! I even started conducting a little bit at school, just getting groups of friends to do charity concerts, etc. I actually found it quite fun to be able to work socially with other musicians. I enjoyed that process of making music, but never had any idea of what being a professional conductor would really be like. In fact, I started working semi-professionally as I left university, with some of the younger early music players part-time whilst working as a school teacher. The irony is that between 21 (when I graduated) and 29 (I think it was), I did five years of teaching, some freelance work and suddenly ended up with a Deutsche Grammophon contract! So, I had to learn and learn very quickly. I think what was interesting was that the reason they signed me up was that I was, and probably still am, one of the great “ideas” men in music and that is partly why I have the most success doing my own projects. Because I think the music world is actually quite industrial, I like to challenge - perhaps I like to be a little bit of an “enfant terrible”. I recognize the need to challenge and make people think in a different way. Of course, some musicians love that and some musicians dislike that whole concept! Conductors are always there to divide opinion…and that is what we do.

PH: You conduct opera, choirs and symphony orchestras, but you have also been deeply involved with the Gabrieli Consort & Players. Where do you stand regarding the authentic performance movement? 

P.McC: I am no ayatollah. I feel, for me, certainly in the very early repertoire - Renaissance and Baroque music - that it is very difficult to get the sound world I really enjoy from modern instruments. It’s not impossible and I have no philosophical objection to a good modern orchestra playing Handel or even hearing Bach played on the piano. I think with Classical and Romantic repertoire it is easier to get a good result on modern instruments. But for me, I do prefer to work with period instruments even in 20th century repertoire, because there is such a range of colours there and a range of performing techniques, which is always interesting to rediscover. But the reality is that I am a working conductor; most of my work is with modern symphony orchestras - that is where our musical world is centred...for better or for worse and in the opera house, where it is relatively rare to be able to use period instruments. So, I have to be fairly flexible and I am happy to be flexible. I think it is possible to give a good historically-aware and sensitive, stylistic performance of music on modern instruments. As first choice, it is always nice to have the original instruments in your hands but it is not the only way to make music.

PH: Do you prepare editions?

P.McC: Put it this way: I am a bit lazy. I don’t “publish” editions, simply because I am a performing musician. I do feel the process of research and scholarship is very, very important, but it is something that for me is part of the music-making and, if you actually publish editions, you have to spend a lot of time writing notes, comparing every single source in every obscure library;  that process is of interest to me but it is not fundamentally something I can afford to give the time to commercially. So, I often work in conjunction with musicologists and I certainly work consistently on sources. I do a certain amount of core research myself and like to work with a lot of other people to exchange information. 

PH: How does this all apply to the performance style of the Gabrieli Consort & Players?

P.McC: One of the interesting things about the Gabrieli is that we can be playing Purcell one day and Walton the next. You need to have to have a huge range of resources, of skills. The Gabrieli Consort isn’t just about me - it is actually a forum of musicians and scholars of many areas coming together to exchange and share information. That might be as recondite as researching the beginnings of the 20th century British orchestra – we are recording  Elgar’s “Gerontius” at the end of the season, working out exactly who the players will be and the type of instruments they will be playing; or it  could be going right back to Purcell and rediscovering different ways of playing the Baroque violin, with French bow holds and new articulation. For example, we have pioneered a new approach to real historic stringing. I’m sorry to be political, but a lot of Baroque orchestras are semi-Baroque orchestras. They play very nicely, but often the instruments are compromised and with stringing that is half-modern.

I feel if I am going to be spending most of my life as a professional conductor working with modern orchestras, many of whom play very stylishly, I think period instrument ‘specialists’ have got to be a bit more serious about the work they do and that means proper instruments, not a ‘uni’-Baroque violin for Monteverdi to Mozart. That’s not possible. You have to take into consideration the technical setting-up of your instrument, the type of instrument, noticing if there is a difference between instruments that were played in Paris or in Linz or London. There are so many permutations.

And then you will ask “Why do we bother?” We bother because, in the end, there are far more possibilities of orchestral- and instrumental sound than you will ever hear in a symphony orchestra, no matter how fine it is. There is something additional that you can bring to the party if you have this range of colours, this different feeling for phrasing, for articulation, for balance - all those things that help make Elgar sound specifically Elgar, Britten sound specifically Britten and Purcell sound specifically Purcell – and SO different to Handel, for example, even though Handel was working in London only twenty years later. 

PH: Do you write about music?

P.McC: No. I talk about it a lot. I rarely write. Again, it’s just time. If I’m going to write, I want to write like the best author or the best journalist and I’m capable of doing it very well, but I’m not a full-time writer. It takes me a lot of time and there’s nothing that frustrates me more than sloppily-expressed thought, so I would rather talk on radio or to journalists, hoping they edit it properly...and leave it there. 

PH: Do you teach?

P.McC: Not formally, but part of my work with young musicians is obviously within the teaching bracket. I sometimes coach privately, particularly singers, but I don’t formally hold a position...I don’t have enough time. I also think I’m a little bit of a maverick; I don’t really see myself turning up at a venerable conservatoire having to teach classes on a Thursday between 10:00 and 11:45. In fact, I  think a lot of my best teaching work is as a hired conductor to go in and do a project and to get people to think. I love that process and I think I am a natural teacher in that sense. For me, it is always nice to work with younger musicians.

PH: Do you write music?

P.McC: No. Not a dot. Just simply do not have the talent. Oh, sometimes I will do a little bit of completion...that type of thing. It’s always a great mystery to me. Dare I say it...I think I’m a very good musician (I hope I am…I have been paid to be a musician for forty years.) I have a tremendous instinct for music; it doesn’t really matter whether I am conducting Josquin or I am conducting Stravinsky. It’s all sort-of the same to me and if I do conduct a contemporary piece, with great sensitivity I can often put my finger on little things that might be improved or things that could work better. But, having said that, I am totally in awe of composers because they are simply a different level of musician. I am absolutely full of admiration for them - people who are able to create new music and particularly good new music. When you look at some of the new music that is coming out, it is immensely impressive. Inevitably, with contemporary music, there is always going to be a lot of average music, but, even so, the process of making music is a really important one and one we need to encourage. 

PH: There is so much new music around us. How should the listener approach it?

P.McC: We should be very careful not to judge a piece after one performance. As a conductor, often the music I end up loving the most is the music that doesn’t always grab me first time. I think that is also a very important point in the process of education. Music is a language which takes time to discover and if you listen to a piece of music and you don’t like it you have two options: you can throw it in the bin and say “I will never listen to that again”  (which might occasionally be the right response), but I think sometimes we owe it to ourselves, particularly if we are talking about music by a known, great composer, to take the time to listen and listen again. Some of the composers I most love now I simply didn’t understand when young, Elgar being one. Yesterday, I had a late-night WhatsApp conversation with a young student friend of mine struggling with Mozart. I understand why he doesn’t get that yet. When I was twenty, I didn’t really get Mozart, but at some age you will probably realize why people hear the name of Mozart and hold their breath. Even bad Mozart is always greatness! 

PH: You are exceedingly interested in education. What is your main goal in this field?

P.McC: I try to invest care and time in younger people and developing them, and not just as future musicians. I’m interested in creating people who have a sensibility to what culture offers the world and ‘culture’ I define in the broadest sense - it’s not just music, it’s not even only art, it’s also the culture of farming, the culture of industry, the culture of archaeology, the culture of nations. We are sitting here looking out a window, where you can see a part of the world that has been carved up politically, as we all know, probably rather too often. But, nevertheless, we are looking through the window at four countries. We are in a part of a world which is a crucible of invention and a crucible of great cultures, competing cultures sometimes, but it is that understanding of culture which I think is the only hope for the future, because, if we don’t understand that, we will just resort, again and again, to bombs and guns. I think culture is a really important thing; it’s not just a matter of being refined and it’s not just a matter of being able to mix with a certain class. It is much more important than that - it actually defines who we are as people.

PH: When it’s not music, what interests you?

P.McC: Walking, restoring my 17th century house, my family; I have two adult children who are always close to my heart and about whom I worry, probably unnecessarily (as is the nature of being a parent). 

PH: Maestro McCreesh, it has been enormously interesting talking to you. Thank you for sharing your experience and insight.

Talking to German baritone Matthias Vieweg at the 2020 Eilat Chamber Music Festival

Matthias Vieweg (photo: M.Vieweg)

On January 22nd 2020, I met with baritone Matthias Vieweg at the Dan Eilat Hotel, Israel, where he was performing at the Eilat Chamber Music Festival. Born in Thuringia, Germany, he studied at the Hanns Eisler School of Music, Berlin, also receiving guidance from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hans Hotter, George Fortune, Rudolf Piernay and Peter Schreier. Matthias Vieweg has performed at concert venues and festivals in Europe and Japan under such conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Kent Nagano, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Günter Neuhold, Philippe Pierlot, René Jacobs, Hermann Max and Helmut Rilling. He is an internationally active interpreter of opera, oratorio and Lieder.

PH:  Matthias Vieweg, is this your first time in Israel?

MV: No. I am happy to be here. I love the country and enjoy meeting people here with different cultural backgrounds, to share interests and experiences.

PH: Are you from a musical family?

MV: Yes. My father’s siblings were all professional musicians. I grew up with music - with a lot of Bach. We did not listen to so much modern music.

PH: What was your early music education?

MV: I started with piano lessons at age five, meaning that I read music before I read words! I had a good piano teacher. By the age of 14, I had to decide what to do in the East German system, because my family was connected with the church and it was forbidden for us children to go to high school. But I needed to find a way to graduate high school. In East Germany, there were a lot of specialist music schools, so I auditioned and enrolled in one of them, where I would also be able to do high school matriculation. That was a step in the direction of becoming a music sound master (my ambition) as we did recordings there. We had classes in voice training, in piano, in conducting, history of music, harmony - a really good basic music education, much richer than the usual high school education. The school had a very good mixed choir, on the level of the St. Thomas Boys’ Choir, Leipzig and we did a lot of recordings; this also gave me an opportunity to get a taste of what went on in the studio there. It was a boarding school in the Harz Mountains and I graduated from there. 

PH: How did you start your career in music?

MV: By accident. I wanted to work in music production, to be a sound master, guiding musicians - that was my intention.  But with the changes in Germany, I needed to change my plans completely. At that time, in East Germany of the1990s, companies were shutting down and there was no need for more music producers there. So, I looked for other things I could do: I could play the piano, I could sing and I was good at mathematics, so I started with mathematics. But I then decided I was more the artistic type, left the maths studies and began to develop my voice. So, you could say I became a professional singer by accident. 

PH: Where did you study?

MV: I studied in Berlin, becoming a singer step by step, but had the advantage of a solid musical background from my schooling. 

PH: Do you see yourself mostly as an opera singer, a singer of oratorio or Lieder?

MV: I really love them all. At present, I am doing more concerts, opera and oratorio and less Lieder recitals, because, at the moment, it is really hard to do Lied recitals - to find an agent or a concert hall where you can hold a concert is really hard. I love singing Lieder because I also studied Lied accompaniment at the university, but I probably do just two Lied recitals a year. The rest is oratorio and opera. I like opera but feel I can not engage in only one discipline. It can be really nice if you take something from opera into concert performance and vice-versa. In concert performance, you have to concentrate on the music, build your phrases and to shape the music really well. If you also do that in opera, it is really nice; you can show the dramatic experience of opera in oratorio, because there is so much dramatic music there. If you sing only as an oratorio singer with no experience of operatic dramatic expression, your performance lacks something. 

PH: I see you won 2nd Prize at the 1998 International Bach Competition in Leipzig, and that you have sung in Bach festivals. Is Bach your most preferred composer?

MV: Bach is, of course, my number one composer. And not only for singing. I love all his music. Bach is really natural for me. When I hear a line of Bach’s music, I can feel it immediately. Maybe it is because I grew up with Bach. But there is also so much good music besides Bach and I am very interested in all other repertoire and other musical styles as well - not only Classical, Baroque, but earlier and later music. I am interested in good music! If music “reads” your heart, if it can reach you, it must be good music. That is my idea of music and not to discount it if it is not so rich or so sophisticated. It all depends on what the music tells you and if there is music that tells you a certain story then it is, in my opinion, good music.

PH: Where do you stand regarding the movement of authentic early music performance?

MV: I really like the idea of bringing the original sound of that music to the audience. As of age 14, I remember groups playing Baroque music in the authentic manner because, for me it was more natural than the overloaded Romantic style of performance. I love that, but sometimes I am really glad to do it the other way, with a large orchestra, large choir and a full musical sound. All this depends on how the music is done. If it is done well, it is fine. I am not strict in thinking there is only one way of performing Baroque music. And anyway, nobody really knows exactly what music sounded like then. There are books of correct spelling of Latin or of early English, but should we do Bach in modern German pronunciation? I think Bach would have been performed in the Saxonian dialect and I think we should sing that music in the Saxonian dialect. But I would laugh if I heard that. And after all the arguments over what is right and what is wrong in Baroque performance practice, people forget that every person needs to sense the music and find his way of performing it, even if it is not the best way. One can then always try a different approach. But I like the way the authentic artists produce the music - how they did it in the Baroque was much lighter, not so slow, more dancelike, more organic and not so overloaded with Romantic musical ideas. 

PH: Do you write about music? 

MV: Very seldom, but I like to discuss music. I have a composer friend who sends me new compositions of his in order to get my opinion on them. What I like is listening to that music without knowing what his basic idea is to first listen to it to hear whether it speaks to me and what I can find in it.  Only afterwards do I wish to discuss the structure and the ideas behind the piece with the composer. Of course, you cannot hear the ideas behind a piece if they are very sophisticated. Even in Bach’s music, you cannot hear all the complexity of the mathematics in his music. But the point is whether you feel the music and that you realize that there must be more to it than you hear the first time. If you listen to music twice, ten- or twenty times, you can pick up whether it is really good, each time finding new points of interest.  

PH: What do you think today’s audiences in Central Europe are looking for?

MV: I think audiences want more than a concert - they want a “performance”. What I don’t like is that the audience is over-inundated with things not to do with the music. What I really like are concerts in venues not normally used for concerts. You can discover really nice places and then find the idea of how music can enrich them. There is a lot of that happening now. It is really not easy to fill concert halls nowadays. People are swamped with TV, you can watch movies on your ‘phone, etc. It is so hard to get these people to come to a concert, to shut their eyes or watch what is happening, but mainly to open their ears and their minds to the music being performed. If this can be done, these people will love it. It’s an experience you can’t have with your mobile ‘phone or from watching TV. You need to sit there with the musicians in front of you. If you can achieve that, people will come back again for more. But I believe concert organizers will find ways to draw in the people if they offer something extra at a concert. Coming back to our discussion of the Lied recital, that is where you can’t have a large audience. Maybe it is too intimate a genre for some people. One has to be prepared for that fact that this music is not as overwhelming and that it has a specific kind of emotion. Only the big names manage to do recitals nowadays. 

PH: When it is not music, what interests you?

MV: I’m interested in literature, walking, discovering nice spots, even locally, and I love to travel with my family. My family occupies me a lot. 

PH: Matthias Vieweg, thank you for your time and for sharing your thoughts on performance.

Talking to British choral conductor Joanna Tomlinson

Photo courtesy Joanna Tomlinson

On June 17th 2019 I met with choral conductor Joanna Tomlinson in Sirolo Italy, where she was running a Lacock workshop for choral singers. Ms.Tomlinson lives and works in London.

PH: Joanna Tomlinson, you are a soloist, conductor, consort singer and teacher. Where do you see your focus in all these disciplines?

Joanna Tomlinson: Primarily as a conductor now, but that hasn’t always been the case. In my postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Music I trained as a singer and, for a few years, saw it as my career combining professional choral singing with solo work in oratorio and opera. But the bug for conducting has taken over more and more over the last few years and it really is what I enjoy most, I think possibly because of the immediacy of seeing the enjoyment when working with amateur singers, actually. You get that reward with your audiences to an extent, but there is something really wonderful about working with amateur singers and seeing how happy they can be when they work something out or enjoy the musical meaning in what you are introducing them to. Choral singing can be life-changing for people and I have seen it so often in choirs, with people finding friendships or a partner or that choral singing can really help them in their lives. It is seeing that close at hand that I love so much, as well as the fact that every aspect of choral music has probably been my great love; I get to do all of it, from early small-scale works to big, grand oratorio work with orchestras - a lovely variety.

PH: Do you not work with professional singers?

JT: Very occasionally I get to conduct professionals, though I do not work with a professional group on a regular basis. That is something I might like to do further down the line. Financially, it entails a big effort to make a professional choir work, with fundraising and finding grants. But I do enjoy working with good amateur singers and it is easier to make that model work, with people paying a subscription.

PH: What are your earliest musical experiences?

JT: Music was in our family from a very young age. My mother’s sister was a professional viola player and was involved in the historically informed performance movement in its early days, playing with such groups as the Academy of Ancient Music. She was also principal viola of the London Mozart Players and worked as a soloist as well. And then at Christmas, the family would be around and we would all play instruments or sing. My aunt would play the viola or accompany on the piano and there would be a lot of music going on.

PH: What form did your early music education take?

JT: I started the recorder very young, as many children do. There was a wonderful headmistress of the school at the time, who said to my mum that I should have a go at the violin. So I started learning the violin and was encouraged in that, but it was the singing that I really wanted to do later on. I joined the local church choir at age ten or eleven and really loved the choral singing, quite quickly learning to sight-read in that situation. Having come from the violin, sight-reading came quite naturally to me. When I was thirteen or fourteen, there was a singing teacher at my school who came and did some demonstrations. I just went up to her and said I wanted to have singing lessons. My poor parents were already paying for other music lessons and now there were singing lessons as well. The singing quickly became what I loved most, though I kept violin, recorder and piano going right up to the end of school.

PH: Did you go to a music school? 

JT: No. But, for 6th form, I got a scholarship to Bedales School, an interesting, quite artistic school, though I actually did maths and physics with music for my A-levels. But there was a lot of music going on at Bedales and the head of music at the time - Nick Gleed - was a keen organist and harpsichord player, so the early music I was into with recorder playing found great camaraderie with him, with lots of Baroque sonatas and such works.  That was wonderful, but I also got very involved with every aspect of music-making there, also doing sound work for theatre. Doing maths and physics, I had toyed with the idea of studying sound engineering. But Nick encouraged me into going for a straight music degree first before specializing, which was really good advice. Actually, after finishing school, I stayed on at Bedales for a year, teaching in the junior school.

PH: So, to your university studies.

JT: I did my undergraduate degree at Bristol University. There, I was playing the recorder and violin reasonably seriously to the end of my music degree and had to use my piano skills but did not carry on with lessons.in that.  You just can’t practise all those things once you go more into certain things. Even practising singing and conducting is enough! I did my post-graduate degree as a singer at the Royal College of Music. But, in between, I had a bit of time working in arts administration, working for Askonas Holt, an agency representing artists. The job gave really good insight into that world. I also did some work at the Barbican Centre in marketing before starting postgraduate studies. 

PH: What did you do following your postgraduate degree?

JT: I landed some work teaching singing at that point. That would have been harder to go into if I hadn’t had the experience of that year of teaching at Bedales. This gave me the stability of having two days a week of a regular job so I could surround that with my freelance singing at the time.

PH: Let’s talk about the present. What are your various jobs at the moment?

JT: I run the Constanza Chorus, which is a choir I set up ten years ago...with my mum, actually. I was just getting going with the conducting then, having done a little at university when doing things related to singing teaching. My mum basically does all the administration, but is just about to stop doing that and pass the job onto a committee. The choir has really thrived. Our 10th anniversary concert happened just a few weeks ago and I was very lucky to get to conduct the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Bach B-minor Mass with fabulous soloists at Cadogan Hall. The choir - 130 singers - really makes a wonderful sound; a lovely group, based in the City of London. The name refers to Constanze, Mozart’s wife, the reason being that the first concert we did was Mozart’s Requiem. And Constanze was a fine singer and I wanted the choir to come from the point of view of having good vocal coaching. The other choir I conduct in London is the Whitehall Choir, which I have now run for two years. I took over from Paul Spicer, who had been doing it for 17 or 18 years. It is a choir that is very much open to everybody; a good mixture of people: about half the choir is in the public sector in some form or another. A smaller choir, their optimum number, which we have now reached, is 70-ish. Not a chamber choir, but it needs to be that size because they do a concert at St John’s Smith Square every year and you can’t get more than 70 plus orchestra in there. I really enjoy that job, actually. Being half the size of the Constanza Chorus, it means one can do more chamber-sized works as well as slightly bigger stuff. They really take to Handel and Bach and that kind of music. My first program with them, which I had inherited but really, really loved, was Handel’s “Joshua”. Then, on Wednesdays, I work with the Farnham Youth Choir in Surrey, which is a really excellent upper voice choir. My predecessor was the founder, David Victor Smith who, with his wife, had run it for 30 years. They stepped down three years ago. That was a very interesting project for me to take over because it had to go from being something that was really founder-led to where all the administration and overseeing do not need to be done by the music director. So, we have made the transition to having the choir run by a committee with an operations manager. But I am the artistic director. That job has taught me a lot about the business side. In the main youth choir - secondary school age 11 to 18 - there are about 45 upper voice singers. The boys leave when their voices change, a bit of a hard thing to deal with, but that’s how it is at the moment. We have two junior choirs which I don’t conduct but I oversee. The littlest choir has about 35 six to nine-year-olds; the middle choir has a similar number of nine to twelve-year-olds. So we have well over a hundred children.in the organization and we are trying to expand a little bit. They do sing well. We are about to take the main youth choir on two tours this summer - one to Gothenburg, Sweden for the European Choir Games and we have also been invited to sing John Rutter’s Mass for the Children in Sion, Switzerland. Under my predecessor, the youth choir sang on the premiere recording of the Rutter piece. The youth choir has traditionally taken part in a lot of competitions and done very well in them. They perform everything from memory and sing a wide range of repertoire from Hildegard von Bingen right through to works written last year, pop arrangements and jazz arrangements...and everything in between, like Schubert and Duruflé, a really mixed secular and sacred repertoire. They are a lovely group. Those are my main regular choirs.

PH: Do you take on one-time conducting jobs?

JT: Yes. Such as the Lacock course I am conducting this week at Monteconero and quite a lot of workshops - like come-and-sings - and I also get invited to do some vocal coaching work as well with groups. I have stopped teaching in schools but I do some private singing teaching and some private conducting teaching. I do some teaching for the Association of British Choral Directors, an organization that offers courses to absolute beginners through to advanced courses.

PH: You sound very busy. What about your own singing nowadays?

JT: I keep the singing going, though I just don’t have time to do any opera contracts these days. (My opera work included bits and bobs, more chorus work, but the odd solo. I did a couple of seasons of “Opera Holland Park” some years back.) I do some choral work; primarily I sing with Sonoro, a professional group that my husband Neil Ferris conducts. Occasionally, when I have time, I go into other groups: I have done a fair bit with the BBC Singers and have worked with the Gabrieli Consort and other ensembles over the years, but it is just getting harder to juggle that in now that the conducting work is quite regular. Still, it is nice to do an oratorio as a one-off day. It is good to get to the point that you can trust there will be enough in the diary...as long as one engagement doesn’t clash with other activities. Earlier in my career, I used to get so frustrated when that happened! Actually, I had a lovely project recently chorus-mastering a really beautiful new piece by Howard Skempton. I was preparing the chorus for Glyndebourne and it was an amateur chorus of women and children. It was a piece about motherhood. Sheila Hill wrote the text. It was an event of a recent Brighton Festival.

PH: Where do you stand regarding the early music authentic performance movement?

JT: Well, I think it is really important that we inform ourselves as much as possible, read and educate ourselves about stylistic things. It is something that has interested me a lot. In my undergraduate studies I wrote a dissertation on French Baroque ornamentation. I think sometimes people take things they read and interpret them in a way they choose to interpret them. They perhaps take things too far and can be militantly obsessed with how “it should be” and that their way is “authentic” and that it can’t be any other way. I think there can be a lot of snobbishness in the early music world about things like vibrato in the sound. When we sing well, when everything is coordinated well, there is likely to be vibrato happening naturally. The trick is probably to book singers who have less weighted voices and, therefore, the vibrato (if they are singing freely) will be rather more imperceptible, with a smaller oscillation. To try and constrict singing can be dangerous and actually really affect the tuning negatively. I’m all for freedom of breath and freedom of singing expressively and with phrasing without tightening everything to make a slim sound. Blend can really occur when vowels are matching and everyone is singing well. You don’t have to blend by constricting. I think perhaps some people misinterpret that.  I love authentic playing. I love hearing period instruments played well. I get the impression that players are getting better and better. 

PH: You are also involved in contemporary music. Do you see it as a special field of yours?

JT: I enjoy singing contemporary music but I wouldn’t call myself a specialist in anything other than choral music generally. I am more a choral specialist than an orchestral specialist. But I do like to keep my options open and do a bit of everything. I have always been like that, with violin and recorder and piano and singing, loving Baroque music and modern music. As I have got older, I have become more open to everything as well...less snobbish about certain things and seeing the value in everything. Music has value if it is well crafted. It is worth exploring everything and I like to try and keep an open mind.

PH: Do you write music?

JT: Occasionally. I used to do more. I have written the odd piece for my choirs and arranged the odd thing for them. Not that much nowadays. It’s something I would like to do more of in time.

PH: Do you write about music?

JT: No, other than program notes, which obviously is a conductor’s job we have to do a lot. I have recently become a co-editor for “As You Sing”, an upper voice collection for Oxford University Press, which my husband Neil and I were invited to compile to include works of living composers. We didn’t have to write very much; we did an introduction. I enjoyed doing the writing for that, actually, very much an editor’s eye. With the OUP editor we were commissioning works or asking composers if they had works that fit the criteria we were after for the book. There are nine pieces - works by such established composers as Cecilia McDowall, Sarah Quartel, Kerry Andrew and Oliver Tarney and others now starting to get published.  Michael Higgins is just now starting to be published by OUP, partly because we introduced his music to them, which is really nice. One piece is in two parts; most are in three (SSA), with one or two in four or more parts. We really want the book to be used by young people, mostly teenagers, and by women’s choirs.  Women’s choirs are very popular in the USA and I think they are starting to be more popular in the UK. We wanted the texts to be appropriate to both children’s choirs and women’s choirs. Nature seems to feature a lot; we didn’t want the texts to be too romantic, patronising or childish. It has been collaborative and really interesting and has taught me a lot about why I pick a piece or don’t choose to work on with my choirs, really analysing what works in choral writing. 

PH: Would you like to talk about your future plans?

JT: As I mentioned before, there are the two overseas tours with Farnham. In the Autumn, my Whitehall Choir is singing “Messiah”. Everyone thinks they know it well. They have done a lot of Handel but not “Messiah” in the last 20 years. We are going to have a come-and-sing as well in the Autumn, really focusing on vocal technique. We will perform at St. John’s Smith Square, which is very exciting. They have a lot of people wanting to do it at that venue, so we feel very lucky to get to do it there with some super soloists and period band. And then, in a few weeks’ time, I have another come-and-sing coming up at a festival at the St Marylebone Parish Church. Sonoro, the choir I sing with has a really interesting project at the moment: it has taken six well-known pieces, including works like Tallis’ “If You Love Me” and Stanford’s “Beati Quorum” and then commissioned six contemporary composers to write a paired piece with each, using either the text or something that reflects on the original; the aim was that those pieces are not so very difficult and that amateur choirs could include them in their repertoire. We have done some really beautiful and artistic YouTube videos of all twelve pieces of the “Inspirations Project” and are about to tour various places around the UK to do workshops on them with amateur choirs and then to perform either with those choirs or separately. I hope it will be an interesting experience for them to sing alongside us. There will be a London workshop as well. 

PH: You have mentioned your work with come-and-sing events. Are they one-off sessions?

JT: Yes. People just turn up and learn a work on the day...for a bit of a fun sing-through but I try and really make sure people come away with something tangible, such as singing technique, and make sure there are one or more new ideas they can take away from the day and back to their own choirs. 

PH: When it’s not music, what interests you?

JT: Food: I like cooking and I like nice food and wine. And I have two lovely step-children. I enjoy time with them and my husband. I love doing yoga and would like to make more time for that and perhaps one day go on a yoga retreat. However, being a freelance musician doesn’t leave a lot of time for other activities.

PH: Joanna, it has been a pleasure talking to you.