Graham Johnson

Graham Johnson is recognized as one of the world’s leading vocal accompanists. 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’s first masterclasses at Snape Maltings, which brought him into contact with Benjamin Britten—a link that strengthened his determination to accompany. In 1976 he formed The Songmakers’ Almanac to explore neglected areas of piano-accompanied vocal music, and throughout his career he has maintained long and fruitful collaborations with many distinguished singers. Graham Johnson’s relationship with Wigmore Hall in London 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 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 Hyperion, for whom he has devised and accompanied sets of the complete songs of Schubert and Schumann, as well as a substantial proportion of the wider Hyperion French song edition. He is author of The Songmakers’ Almanac: Twenty years of recitals in London, The French Song Companion (OUP, 2000), Britten: Voice and Piano (Ashgate, 2003), Gabriel Fauré: the Songs and their Poets (Ashgate, 2009) and Franz Schubert: the Complete Songs (Yale, 2014). Awards include four Gramophone awards (three for albums in the Schubert and Schumann series) and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Year in 1998; he is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society. 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 des Lettres by the French Government. He is a Doctor of Music honoris causa on three continents: at Durham in the UK, Boston’s New England Conservatory in the USA, and Perth in Western Australia.