The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

A Musical Soirée!  It sounded as if we were stepping into a painting by Tissot, your Go-To Man for frocks, recording an age of excess in his studio in St John’s Wood.  There they’d be – the gentlemen in their severe black and white with just a twinkle of diamond studs, and the ladies – oh, the ladies! – sailing across the parquet like small yachts, their wake a vast bustle so loaded with frills and ruching and bows that it was surely only the ferocious corseting of the day which stopped them sinking.  And Tissot never missed a single frill.

So it was carriages for Maida Vale, and aptly so, for we had to come to Jean Hathorn’s elegant flat to hear Graham Johnson, one of the leading accompanists of our day, tell us about his experiences learning his trade at Aldeburgh, working with Benjamin Britten and his partner, Peter Pears. It is 100 years since Britten was born.  Johnson told us how, as a student in London, he wrote to Britten and was astonished to get a reply by return of post.  (With the present state of the Royal Mail, he’d have been even more astonished!)  Before long he was able to go to the Aldeburgh Festival and it wasn’t his fault that he arrived just as the Maltings burnt down!  But even so, Britten saw him at his house, and when Peter Pears heard him he described him as ‘a very useful pianist’, which is no bad thing, and certainly gave him something to build on!       

Anyone who has heard Graham Johnson’s “Songmaker’s Almanac” programme, where he assembled several well-known singers to sing recital repertoire, and talked about the music, will know he is a very articulate speaker.  We got an inside view of Britten’s life, when, from 1970 inwards, Graham Johnson stayed regularly at Aldeburgh. He found that Britten never discussed his work at home.  He had his study; he worked in it, and nobody went in there, not even Peter Pears.
Perceptively, Graham Johnson said that Britten wrote himself into his music at all times, and this, I think, can polarize attitudes to his output.  He hated Brahms and Johnson thought it was because they both, in different ways, had a great deal of torment swirling round inside them.  But some of Britten’s dislikes could be odd.  He couldn’t stand Richard Strauss’ “Rosenkavalier” and, when pressed by Graham Johnson, who loved it, as to why, he said it was “all that Lesbianism”.  Well yes, as a breeches role Octavian is much more steamy than some others, but there’s never any suggestion that she’s not supposed to be a he!  But perhaps all that broad Viennese humour, and chocolate and cream atmosphere would never have suited Britten anyway.  We were told the atmosphere at Aldeburgh was rather prim.       

Britten was much afraid that young composers coming up, and younger people in general, would find him passé.  Your present reviewer would not say that, but rather that he was so rooted in the geography of his background, on his windy coast, that the very Englishness of his music hasn’t always been taken up internationally as much as it might have been.  For example, the operas.           

Britten was a superlative accompanist, when he had time to do it, but Graham Johnson had coached Peter Pears for the role of Aschenbach in the opera “Death in Venice” and this led to his accompanying masterclasses given by Pears.            

Graham Johnson also gave us some examples on the piano and it would have been very interesting to have had more.  But as with all proper soirées musicales, as well as supper, there had to be an impromptu at the end, and a very good idea it was too. Tenor Aidan Coburn was called from his duties at the bar, James Sherlock was summoned to the piano, and they gave us first the melancholy song “O Waly, Waly”, where the lover says sadly “I little thought what love can do”.  Then we had the raging bitterness of Schumann’s “Ich grolle nicht” – “no light from your diamonds falls into the darkness of your heart”.  And I for one went home with the songs in my head.

Aldeburgh was, outside of Festival time, always a rather closed world, from general opinion at the time, so it was interesting to get the inside view, and from one who had remarkable access, and remarkably good treatment.  It would be false to pretend it was always so easy. 

And then it was carriages at ten.  And your reviewer was very glad that, when invited to enjoy the pre-performance nibbles, she just avoided dipping into a bowl displaying a collection of pale pink shells!