Moment 1

The Gobbi Jobbie

Moment 5

The Crucifixion

Moment 6

Pearlfishers in Verona

My very dear friend, Geoffrey Parsons, who sadly died in 1995, at the height of his remarkable career as an accompanist to some of the greatest singers of our time, left a message for me at the Royal Academy of Music where I was studying to be a singer. The message read: “Have you any tails? And are you free from 4 o’clock tonight?” I rang him with the answer No to tails but Yes to being free and he picked me up in his faithful Austin 10 outside the Academy. It transpired that Geoffrey was accompanying the celebrated tenor Richard Lewis at his Wigmore Hall recital that evening. The ‘duty’ page turner was ill and no-one else was available – so I was to turn Geoffrey’s pages. We went to his flat picked up his old tails and bought a shirt and tie and we were ready. At least, he was – I had never ‘turned’ before so a little training was required and I was instructed to always sit after turning a page, to turn pages quietly and slowly when he nodded and above all not to move my chair - ever. This daunting initiation began well – the suit fitted and I followed the artists on to the stage at a respectful distance with the aid of a restraining hand from the stage manager! All went well until mid-way through the song cycle Die Fischerein when we arrived at the song – Der Erlkonig. Two things were immediately apparent to me – one that this song was very fast and secondly, Geoffrey, always preferred to play from the smaller A4 sized lieder editions of Schubert’s works. This explained why Geoffrey was nodding at me so fast as if imitating one of those toy dogs in the rear window of a car!! I did not have time to sit down between turns – my abiding memory of the evening was of Geoffrey Parsons feverously nodding whilst trying to look musically calm! Nobody commented on the page turner’s shoes which were Hush Puppy brown suedes in which I had left home that morning. One of the songs so beautifully sung by Richard Lewis on this evening was Schubert’s ‘Litanei’ – so this next musical ‘moment’ celebrates my debut and last performance at the Wigmore Hall.

MOMENT - 1 My debut at the Wigmore Hall London

Listen to Schubert’s ‘Litanei

Sung by Harvey

Recorded in The Old Chapel Studio Shotesham Norfolk 2014

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