Geoffrey Parsons

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This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

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Geoffrey, whereabouts in Australia were you born? In Sydney. Do you come from a musical family? Not particularly musical. No. Mother and Dad both sang in the church choir. That was about the extent of their musical activities.

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Uh uh and I was the lucky one because I was the third of three sons and uh after the depression was over uh I was the lucky one who got uh a term of thirteen piano lessons for two guineas.

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When did you decide that music was to be your career?

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Well, I rather took to it like a duck to water at the age of seven, the first piano lesson. I remember particularly I used to love Saturday mornings because on Saturday mornings I had a music lesson and clean sheets. But the actual decision to have music as a career was sort of lingering in the back of my mind for right from the very beginning. Yes. And it developed up to about 12, and then I really began to think of it. You entered the Sydney Conservatorium when you were 12? About 12, yes. Studied with Winifred Burston, who was a pupil of Petri and Buzzoni. So for any pianist, that's a good schooling, I think. When did you start taking a special interest in accompanying?

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Uh rather later on, because naturally as a pianist one has to be trained as a piano player, uh whatever aspect of the profession one's taking up. But at about seventeen I had already been playing for my colleagues at the Conservatorium, anybody who needed playing for. And then in nineteen forty eight, when I was eighteen,

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Australian Broadcasting Commission asked me to do a tour of Australia with Essie Ackland and a violinist called Carmel Haekendorf and these two ladies I accompanied and also played solos on the same programme and very quickly discovered that it was the accompanying part of the programme I preferred. There must be a great deal to learn about accompanying and and not just about playing the piano. Oh about playing the piano. In fact it's one of the important things. A lot of people think that because you're an accompanist it's because you didn't succeed at playing the piano well enough to be a soloist. It's not that at all. But to me the important thing, rather less than the technical running about, which we're not required to do as much as a soloist, to me the important thing is

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The sound and the

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sound being complementary to the instrument or the voice for whom one's playing. Yes. Well, you certainly contribute a a virtuoso's technique. Now you were barely out of your teens when you came to England. What decided you on that step?

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Our Peter Dawson, in fact.

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I did a tour of Australia with him. That was my second Australian tour. And in the course of that, he asked me to go to New Zealand with him, which I did. And in the course of that New Zealand tour, he said that there was a tour of Canada and of England coming up. Would I do it with him? And I jumped at it, of course. But unfortunately, the Canadian part of the tour fell through. And so I said to him, Look, if you're still going to England, if I pay my own fare, can I come and play for you when I get there? So, consequently, I was one of the very lucky Australians who came over here with work to do. Yes. Did you find after you left Peter Dawson that opportunities came fairly readily? No.

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Uh they didn't come all that readily at all, but there were some people who did take a an interest in me, uh most especially Ann Ziegler and Webster Booth, with whom I did a lot of concerts. On Music Hall as well? Oh uh yes, a musical variety. I remember uh uh the variety in the Palace Theatre, Reading, which was quite an alarming experience. Uh the stage being filled with people, uh

Geoffrey Parsons3:22

Mm.

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preparing everything, rolling carpets up and down and and putting chandeliers up and down and all sorts of things and I was having to play only a rose in the midst of all this. You had quite a lot of varied experience while you were finding your feet. You did some uh cocktail lounge work too, I see. Only the best.

Geoffrey Parsons3:40

Yeah, I've had

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I was at the Barclay Hotel for about nine months or so, which I enjoyed very much for that time. I got tired of it, of course, because there's absolutely no musical interest in it as such. But in fact, it gave me a pretty decent wage, which bought me my piano, settled me down to be able to refuse such work in the future, so that I was able to concentrate on what I really wanted to do, and it gave my parents their trip to England in 1954. You went off to Germany to study in the 50s, in the early 50s? Yes, in 1955. I played for Gerhard Husch, who was the great pre-war leader singer doing his first post-war

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uh concert in London.

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And he was impressed enough to ask me to come to Munich and work with him uh as his permanent accompanist, which of course was the ideal experience for a budding accompanist. Of course. To work with one of the great leader singers, to have the benefit of his experience and knowledge, uh

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As his own accompanist, it was a tremendous experience for me.

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You had a spell at Gleinbourne as wai petitur. Oh, indeed I did, yes, I loved that. That was uh at the same sort of time as the Hoosh experience. Um

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Gorgeous way to spend the summer, I should think. Oh, it's the ideal way. It was, I must say, for me at that age, it was ideal. I was very much the baby of the music staff. Well, I was twenty-five, and I remember I was paid nine pounds a week for what I did there, and that meant something of a long day, every day. But we had a tremendous amount of fun as well, and this operatic experience I had at Glindbourne has stood me in very good stead, although I've never done any since leaving Glindbourne. Yes. You've played in many, many countries, and quite understandably, you've made rather a speciality of Australian tours. You've conducted a number of artists across your home. Yes, I have. I've now completed thirteen, and I don't think anybody's ever done as many as that. But I enjoy it because I love going back. I love seeing my mother and my brothers there, and a lot of friends I've had since childhood and that I've made since going back. I've been out with Janet Baker.

Geoffrey Parsons5:33

And

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It was Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Richard Lewis.

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Victoria Los Angeles, uh Owen, lots of others. With tours like that, you must have to learn a great number of items, and of course, you're also playing for instrumentalists. The accompanist must cover a wider field of music than almost any musician. I would say so. It's a tremendous repertoire when you consider that we have to know, as accompanists, all the fiddle sonatas, all the cello sonatas and other odd instrumental sonatas, plus all the repertoire, not only of one kind of singer, soprano, but contralto, tenor, bass, everything. Yes, and uh you're liable to get a lot of modern stuff thrown at you, I suppose, especially from violinists. Uh it it quite often happens, yes. Uh and that that has its problems. Um uh but uh I as far as I know about modern music I'm not not uh

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The world's greatest authority on it, and I try to play it as I see it there on the paper. I don't know whether I always succeed. You have to be ready to do instant transpositions, I presume. Yes, that used to be a great bugbear, but I learned how to do it. I wouldn't say I was perfect at it by any means, but it certainly comes a little easier than it used to. And calm your artist when he's nervous without showing your own nerves. That's a very important thing. People sometimes think that accompanists are very phlegmatic kind of people. It's only that they have to appear to be. Because it's not our job to show our nerves. It's our job to help whoever we're playing for to give their best performance. And your job to get him out of trouble. If there should be any trouble. In trouble, that's quite true.

Geoffrey Parsons7:10

Yeah, exactly.

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How growling are long distance tours? Does it mean long plane journeys most days? Uh sometimes it does. It depends obviously on the artist and the way the tours arranged. But very often it does mean uh a lot of travelling. Uh for instance a a tour to Japan means the journey to Japan to start with and

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That takes a few days to get over. Likewise that terrible Atlantic crossing to America. Everybody that knows about that and how long it takes to recover. Uh Australia is probably the worst because it's the furthest and one loses ten hours on this thing and that's always terrible. Uh but the tour itself in Australia is perhaps the most gruelling. Um for for instance, I'm going out again this year in in the summer and in July I've got seventeen concerts. Well in thirty days or thirty one days that's

Geoffrey Parsons7:56

But in

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Rather a lot, and each journey means at least three hundred miles in Australia. Yes. And uh you must have a day or two to recover from the initial journey, I think. Well, exactly, so one has to plan it rather carefully. How much of the year are you out of this country?

Geoffrey Parsons8:06

Yeah.

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Oh

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Eight, nine months it seems. I would like it to be less, but

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That's how life goes. Is there a great deal of variation in the pianos you're given? Not these days, I'm glad to say. It seems that concert promoters and concert halls, especially the newly built ones, usually have very good pianos. It wasn't always the case in the provinces in Australia, in the provinces in England, in fact in the provinces anywhere a few years ago, one really didn't know what one would come upon. And I remember one piano in the north of England which was literally tied together with chewing gum and with a string. And one spent, in fact, as much time lifting the notes as putting them down.

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Now despite his important role, um the accompanist gets his name in smaller type. Do you ever regret not ever having become a soloist?

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Only financially?

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That's a good point. You feel fulfilled. Completely fulfilled. I really do. Musically and personally. I'm doing exactly what I always wanted to do and now I'm privileged to be doing it with great artists. So consequently I'm getting

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All that one could hope for from life.

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Never trodden on the soprano's train. Jolly nearly very often actually. Because sopranos are inclined to walk with shorter steps than I have, and I catch them up however far back I start.

Geoffrey Parsons9:24

However far back I was