Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music and who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?
My parents were the perfect mixture of encouraging and creative, instilling discipline and resilience while not putting a drop of pressure my way. All through school and university I was a musical jack of all trades, and they just let me get on with it. I owe them so much. From my mid-20s various extraordinary singers have come into my life at just the point I was open enough to learn from them.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
The greatest challenge any musician in the UK faces is to work in a sphere that is so affected by incredibly damaging governmental cuts to arts education and the continued decimation of classical music funding. The sector is grossly misunderstood and the lack of investment is shortsighted. Society has never needed art more than it needs it now. It is a vital part of what humans need in order to feel enriched and to be rounded, healthy individuals. The perfect storm of Brexit, a Pandemic, and years of underfunding from the government is leaving a generation open to serious mental health problems and a life considerably poorer. On a personal level, combining a busy performing schedule with fatherhood is a challenge, albeit a glorious one to have.
Of which performances/recordings are you most proud?
Proud is probably not quite the right word but there are certainly performances where you feel a certain magic of pianist, singer, composer, poet and audience all finding an extraordinary alchemy. This is when sparks fly and it can only happen in a ‘live’ setting. I’m interested in the duality of chamber music and how being with any human exploring great art can teach you something very deep and personal about yourself.
Which particular works/composers do you think you perform best?
“Perform best” is not something I’m aiming for. But there are certainly composers that I feel a deep connection to either as a performer or listener. There’s not much music I don’t like, but certainly Schubert, Haydn, Schumann, Faure, Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Britten have made my life full of the most rewarding study. I also get a real kick from commissioning and performing new music.
What do you do off stage that provides inspiration on stage?
If I hadn’t become a musician I would have probably done something with visual arts and so I spend quite a lot of time reading about art, visiting galleries and collecting British woodcuts (Monica Poole, Gill, Ravilious, Nash, Geoffrey Wales, Howard Phipps etc) as well as 20th century original prints (Moore, Piper, Blackadder, Pasmore, Tavener, Charles Barlett etc). I’ve also enjoyed dabbling in pottery which I find a very therapeutic and mindful activity, and even though I hate doing it at the time, I have a niggling feeling that exercise and going to the gym makes me play the piano better.
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?
These come in a variety of guises. Often a singer invites you for a recital or tour or recording where they have specific repertoire in mind. These programmes come either ready made by the singer, or at the least pretty close to finalised (often the singer is looking to the pianist to perhaps suggest the final pieces of the jigsaw). Sometimes promoters invite you as a duo, with a strong theme or composer they particularly want you to programme. Sometimes the programming is done by me, and I have always been fascinated by this process. The very nature of songs, where the texts can suggest such fruitful interplay, mean that there is the possibility for really interesting exchange of ideas, or juxtaposition of sound worlds/contents/themes. I’ve programmed a number of 4-part series for Radio 3 where I’ve really enjoyed taking the listener on a journey over 4 programmes (Strauss, Mahler, Duparc, Wolf and Britten, the Four Season, Paris in the 20th Century) and am building two forthcoming series for Wigmore Hall. The changing face of recording fascinates me too, and gives us the possibility of bringing this music to an ever wider audience.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
Everything you read about Wigmore Hall is true! The acoustic and audience really do encourage you to give your best. I have a very special place in my heart for the small hall at the Concertgebouw. I’ve had so many happy recitals there over the past decade including one a week after my second child was born. I purposely hadn’t told the management that I’d just had a daughter, but they had found out somehow and left the most beautiful gifts in my dressing room. I thought this was such a special and personal touch. The concert halls in Japan are remarkable for their acoustic and piano combo, and the audiences there are also very special, coming to the CD signings after the recital armed with past recordings that you’ve often forgotten you’ve made. I performed solo Debussy at the Berlin Philharmonic last year and the piano there was so perfectly prepared by the technician I felt I could do anything. Performing Lieder to native speakers is also a thrilling experience because there is no language barrier, and so recent performances at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Berlin BoulezSaal, Vienna Musikverein and Schubertiade Schwarzenberg will live long in the memory.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
I would say I’m a looking forward kind of person, rather than a looking backward kind of person, but playing for Sir Thomas Allen on his 70th Birthday tour of Winterreise was a special and deeply revealing experience. Giving the world premiere of Helen Grime’s Bright Travellers at Wigmore Hall, I had the feeling I was playing music that would be in the repertoire for hundreds of years and I love that music does this; connecting us to the past, present and future. My first tour of the USA with Dame Sarah Connolly was a month filled with hilarity and music that I really love and being in Japan with Carolyn Sampson is also always equally rewarding. Having said all that, I played for my son’s violin class of Grade 1 and 3 exams a few months ago and spent the morning beaming from ear to ear. They all put across their pieces with such joy and polish and each of them played in a totally individual and idiosyncratic way. I loved it.
You celebrate this year 10 years as Director of the Leeds Lieder Festival, now in its 20th year – how do you juggle those responsibilities with the rest of your career?
Everything is connected. Travelling around the world performing and recording means I’m really working at the coalface. It gives you a thorough understanding of what makes other festivals succeed, which performers have something individual to say, which composers are writing music that is vibrant and relevant to audiences today, and this helps us at Leeds Lieder to build new audiences and continue to break down barriers. The teaching I do at the Royal Academy of Music and Cambridge University gives me first hand experience of what young musicians entering the profession need and also what they have to offer a new generation of concert attendees. I firmly believe the days of artists just turning up to do recitals and then going home and not engaging with how music fits into our society are well and truly over. We as artists are the people who understand how important classical music is and we can be ambassadors for the transformative power of music if we roll up our sleeves and get stuck into teaching, festival directing, programming etc etc.
How do you decide on the direction and theme of the festival each year and how do you reach new audiences?
People respond to quality. I was really pleased that last year 3 reviews at Leeds Lieder totally ‘got’ what we were doing and recognised what was happening in terms of audience engagement. Put simply, present the highest quality art in a totally unpretentious way:
Daily Telegraph: “this excellent festival has grown from three concerts over a weekend to 36 events over nine days, plus a year-round programme of concerts and events. It wins converts to the apparently rarified and “difficult” genre of art-song among people who might never normally encounter it: schoolchildren, disabled people, ex-offenders. This miracle the festival achieves by following one simple rule: don’t assume something has to be made more palatable to be accessible. Offer the best performers singing the greatest songs from yesterday and today, and the rest will follow.”
The Times: “under the dynamic direction of the pianist Joseph Middleton since 2014, the Leeds Lieder festival has brought musical riches to Yorkshire through star performers, engaging new commissions and bold educational projects…Lieder is considered a rarefied pursuit. Yet when it’s delivered with the disarming opening of the Leicester-raised, Hanover-based baritone James Newby it feels like the most direct form of expression there is.”
Guardian: “ from inner city to international, world-class music making. On paper, Leeds Lieder has everything a levelling up-minded government might desire. Where else could you hear one of the greatest living exponents of French song back-to-back with the winner of this year’s Kathleen Ferrier awards, while celebrating the people of Leeds in a dozen newly minted songs performed by up-and-coming young singers?”
What have you learned from the experience of being the festival’s director?
I have learned how precarious arts education is in the UK, and that if organisations like Leeds Lieder didn’t fundraise and do what we do, going into schools across the region to work with 1000s of school children each year, great swathes of our children will have no access to quality music education. We all recognise just how vital the arts are to a child’s development, intellect, creativity and empathy and yet for some inexcusable reason they are regularly denied and starved of this by shortsighted policymakers.
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
Carving out time for quiet, private study. It sounds flippant, but in a world of easy communication and never ending admin, it takes real discipline to close off the noise and spend time in your music room with no external distractions.
What advice would you give to young/aspiring musicians?
Be curious about everything. Find what you love and people who make you tick. Work hard. Enjoy it.
What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?
We need to change the dialogue in the mainstream media so that mankind’s greatest achievements aren’t seen as elitist but as remarkable expressions of the human condition that we can all learn from. I’ve seen at Leeds Lieder that if you get the punters through the front door, if the gig is good, they will come back for more.
What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about which you think we should be?
Nepotism.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Time with family.
What is your most treasured possession?
My imagination.
What is your present state of mind?
Content.
Joseph Middleton is Artistic Director of Leeds Lieder Festival which this year runs from 13 to 21 April. Full details here
(Artist image: courtesy of Harmonia Mundi)
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