Remembering Geoffrey Parsons: a genius from a bygone age

This month marks 20 years since the death of Australian pianist and accompanist Geoffrey Parsons. Former pupil, friend and one of today’s leading song accompanists Graham Johnson talks about the late musician and wonders whether he would recognise today’s musical world

It was nearly 40 years ago that Walter Legge summoned me to the south of France to accompany his wife, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. He had read a favourable review in the Times, and, more importantly, he knew I was a pupil of Geoffrey Parsons.

Before I journeyed to rehearse with the famous couple in St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, it was Geoffrey, Schwarzkopf’s faithful and regular pianist, who showed me how to dress in a manner fit to accompany the diva’s legendary couture. Tails, of course, but also a shirt with a boiled front and starched sleeves, as well as detachable wing collars, plus an array of appropriate studs and buttons. Shoes had to be of shiny patent leather, cufflinks smart but not flashy, the bow tie knotted in the dressing room, rather than ready-made. This uniform was a complement to an age of grander, more glamorous singers; unashamedly playing that role was expected and celebrated by both singer and accompanist.

Such elegance came easily to Geoffrey Parsons, it was a world he inhabited for the 45 years of his distinguished career, and it is a world that has now more or less vanished. There was an etiquette about the accompanist’s life that now seems scarcely believable. For a start would Geoffrey have believed that today’s male singers often perform in open-neck shirts?

I don’t think I ever heard a flawlessly attired Geoffrey accompany a singer with the piano open on the full stick – which has now become almost the norm for most song pianists. In Geoffrey’s epoch, and in my own earlier years, the Wigmore Hall provided a choice of blocks with which the lid of the grand piano was parsimoniously opened, for fear of drowning the singer – these ranged from a tiny sliver of wood to about 10cm. The term accompanist (still perfectly good in my opinion) had not been replaced by the American coinage “collaborative pianist”, and the job of a pianist was simply to play, rather than double as entrepreneur and programme planner. In a spirit of mock reproof Geoffrey said to me (when I first told him of my plans to form The Songmakers’ Almanac) that it was a pianist’s function to sit by the phone and take down whatever programme the singer chose to dictate to his colleague. Now it seems that almost every aspiring accompanist directs a series, if not always in concerts halls, then in churches, schools and summer festivals. In Parsons’ day, the only song pianists to make recordings were those accompanying artists contracted to the four main record companies – EMI, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon or Philips. For the others, it was honour enough to record for the fastidiously demanding BBC. Today, the proliferation of smaller record labels means that almost every youngish professional has been able to make a recording in some form or other.

But I should also point out, straddling as I do both the Parsons period and that of my younger colleagues, that not all the changes have been for the better. Who can forget the sight (and feel) of a rapt Royal Festival Hall, filled to the brim for an all Hugo Wolf recital by Schwarzkopf and Parsons, and who can imagine such an event today? Which singer today would dare to appear at the Albert Hall for a song recital (as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau did, several times)? The reason why Schwarzkopf didn’t give a recital at the Wigmore Hall until her 60th year was that at 500 seats or so it was too small to contain her myriad fans, the same for Fischer-Dieskau. Geoffrey could still regard himself as a member of a gloriously mainstream profession and his diary was filled with lieder recitals in towns, even countries – his native Australia, for example – that can no longer justify them.

He was a marvellous pianist, unerringly accurate and cool under fire, as well as an enthusiastic host to his ever-nurtured roster of celebrities. His partner, Erich Vietheer, was a singing teacher, and their north-west London home was a mecca for younger singers and pianists. His house is now divided into flats, and how Geoffrey would have hated the vast new development around the corner that will forever change the village character of the West Hampstead he so loved.

It is doubtful whether a present-day reincarnation of Geoffrey Parsons would manage to obtain the right visa to live and work in the UK, and whether he would even be able to afford to live and study in London, if permitted to do so. For Joan Sutherland, and countless other national treasures from Australia, London was always the first port of call. I rather fear that the budding Geoffrey Parsons of today would find himself studying in Berlin. Only 20 years since this wonderful artist died? It seems more like 50.

Geoffrey Parsons, lifelong friend of Wigmore Hall, is remembered this month with an archive release on Wigmore Hall Live. His 1994 concert of Schubert’s Die Schoene Muellerin with baritone Wolgfang Holzmair is released this week.

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