Yes, It was the third time that I participated in the GFA and what I learned from doing it before was to really prepare the required and set pieces well. In the pieces that everyone else also performs one really can be compared with the other competitors. My strategy was to work a lot on the set pieces. As I am personally not a really fast learner and I need quite some time to digest the musical content of a piece, my intent was to have as few engagements as possible the months before and locked myself and my guitar into a room.

Could you tell us something about how you prepared the required as well as the set piece?

This years quite unusual choice of the required piece was Darius Milhaud’s Segoviana. This piece was quite a nut to crack for me, it is a kind of collage of short fragments and many aspects of the notation are quite misleading. In addition, a lot of freedom is left for the performer. So unless one is really clear about what is going on and captures the mood of the different fragments it can become hard for the listener to follow. However, Milhaud’s ability to create music in previously unknown territory is evident in this work just as much as in any of his other works. For me the one of the most important keys to the work became to really let every note sound; there is so much information within the two pages the piece fits into that there is really no need to rush anything. I therefore chose a fairly slow tempo and allowed long fermatas in between sections, although, not too long as then one can lose the feeling of continuity.

The set piece was also quite something substantial to bite into. It was written by the Canadian composer Denis Gougeon. A composer who normally expresses himself in larger forms, of which many have been highly praised. He has written for orchestra and chamber ensemble and his expressive and dramatic writing style has lead him to writing operas and music for the theatre. The guitar piece, although not large in form, is very dramatic in nature. Just the title Lamento- Scherzo suggests a great contrast between a very sad, serious mood to a swift and happy part. Throughout the six weeks I really became enamored with the piece and I have decided to put it on the my GFA Naxos recording. During the last weeks I have also been in contact with the composer and it is really a interpreters dream to receive such direct insight into the music.

What methods do you use when learning a new piece?

When it comes to the process of learning new pieces I like to take more time than six weeks but when time is short I guess one’s methods of learning are put to the test. In order to start practicing a piece one needs to have fingerings done and that takes time. The fingerings is a very important aspect on the guitar more than any other instrument as we have so many possibilities. Ideally, the fingerings should express your very innermost feelings and understanding of the music. The fingering therefore makes a very important statement about our musical personality. So for me the first step is to get to know the piece, by playing it, analyzing it, singing it, thinking about it etc.. When time is short I also try to spot the difficult bits as soon as possible and finger those first. Once I am happy with the fingerings of a passage I start practicing that one even if the whole piece is not fingered, that makes the work more varied and then also more fun. I am also always open for change, after all one can not know if a fingering is good until one can play it in tempo and in context. Then when it comes to learning the piece it is always good to start practicing small segments slowly, in order to not learn it with mistakes. The metronome is also of great help at this point; I put it on a quite fast number and play one note per beat, that makes me really play every note. It is also good to play each note more than once, I try to make it into a habit of practicing all sections repeating each note three times at least once, and for the difficult passages more. In case with the slurred notes I either play all three with the left hand or just the first and then pluck the other two. It is also a good idea to to lift off the fingers of the left hand after each of note played. At this point it is also good to practice the hands separately. When playing with the right hand alone it is done as usual and when playing with the left hand one hit each note so that one hears the pitch (open strings can either be slurred or left out). Once I am comfortable in the slow speed  I move to faster tempos, it is important to keep it challenging but not so much so that one does not have control. Once I can handle faster tempos, I tend to prefer to leave the metronome, but I also go back using it in slower tempos as much as is necessary. Another aspect, which is a bit more far fetched, is to ,even in very slow tempos, keep the musical idea in mind and bring it out even if only practicing very short sections. This is something that one of my teachers Zoran Dukic always made a point of; to “always keep the musical idea in mind”

When we dedicate so much time and energy into something it can be hard to maintain the inspiration and enthusiasm, how do you deal with that?

In my preparation work I tried to keep myself as inspired and stimulated as possible. I love listening to music, especially live, that is somehow the real thing, but as there is no possibility to hear any piece in concert at any time, recordings provides exactly that instant availability which concerts don’t. However, I make a point of never listening to other peoples recording of pieces I am playing. Instead I listen to other works by the same composer or music in similar style. In the case with Gougeon’s piece there are of course no recordings, but there was plenty of his other works that I bought on itunes. Listening to some of those pieces over and over again was crucial for me to be able to grasp his musical language. I was also keeping myself in tune by watching one of my favorite movies which is a documentary about the romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache called Celibidache’s Garden. In there his view on music as way to access higher states of consciousness and his 100% dedication to his profession is captured brilliantly. One of Celibidache’s methods I also applied to my preparation work. To first work on every detail very consciously, being totally aware of the structure and try to understand it in every aspect. Then one has to forget it all and just play it intuitively. So first one has to learn it, but then one has to “live it”.  Due to this approach it all came together in a peak for me during my performance in the final. It was a wonderful experience, I was there merely as another listener watching the music form itself in front of us. Due to this experience I have not really been able to take credit for winning the competition I can not say that I was playing. At least not the “I” that I normally perceive myself to be.

So finally after a lot of hard preparation work what was it like to win first price?

The thing is that I have two sides, one extremely introvert, this side of me comes out the most when I go into composing, and the other very extrovert, that one likes to perform and meet a lot of people. So during a long period of extremely introvert work, my extrovert side was extremely happy to be performing and being in the middle of the attention. Winning the GFA was truly a wonderful sensation, it was one very important step in having my dream coming true, to be able to live a life dedicated to sharing my love for music.

Read more about Johannes here

How did this store get started?

Juan Teijeiro

I started out in “The Spanish Shop” on Fulham Road. It was a little bit out of the way but we did well there. I started to import guitars to sell them to other shops and that’s how it all started. First in Fulham Road and then here, where the store currently is and also just around the corner in James Street, we had a store for ten years. Eric Clapton used to come in all the time, he said he loved the store and he would sit there playing for ages. Once we moved here, that was it, and we didn’t see him anymore. We also started a store over in Warren Street but it didn’t work, there were a lot of people but it just didn’t make money. I couldn’t be at both stores so that meant people just did what they liked. Now we put all of the energy into this store and its doing very well.

What have you seen change in players over the years?

In the 50s I used to go down to a place in Madrid called the “Society for Guitars” and everyone used to go there. Segovia’s wife used to come down and all the famous makers used to come down. You saw the people playing there, and there were a lot of players, and everyone played differently some people even used the little finger. Everything was very, very personal, it was lovely to see. It was lovely to see everyone with different ideas and techniques and now, we have the factory, where everyone plays more or less the same.

What kind of concert guitars are people interested in these days?

Well there is a lot of interest in these new lattice braced guitars. They used to be very, very heavy, extremely heavy, but now they are getting lighter and lighter. There are some people that just don’t want to know because they sound different and they want the traditional sound. But that’s the way it is. Now the guitar, which we sell quite a lot of, is the Dieter Hopf. He worked out a system that he gave to Adalid in Spain so these guitars have a double label Hopf-Adalid  One designed the guitar and the other made it. We sell them like hot cakes. They sell for around 3000 pounds and with some of the others being six or seven thousand, they are very good value.

Why do you think some of these guitars have sky rocketing prices? For instance there are some Smallmans selling in the US for close to 40,000 dollars

Well let me tell you something about that, there are people who collect them. People who have to have a Smallman because they have a Fleta and this and that, they just want to collect them. He doesn’t like that, Smallman, he wants the guitar to go to the guitarist. When one of his customers buys a guitar just to deal with it, he’s not happy. Fleta, was the same way. When I went to put in an order and he knew I had a shop, he wasn’t happy about that. He has so many players waiting so why should he give it to a shop?

What plans do you have for the store?

Well we are going to do the whole place up, new paint new floors, and we have already started. But the one thing about it is we are not going to change the store, many people had something to say about that. Everybody told me “don’t change, leave it as it is” Its like a club here, people can come here, the way it used to be in Spain. You would go into the shop and people were talking, it was normal and that’s what we like here. Anyone can join as long as its about the guitar. We used to have someone working here that was just interested in football, that wasn’t for us it has to be about the music, the guitar. How do you play this, what do you think about that… that’s good for the shop.

The London Guitar Studio is located at

62 Duke Street, London W1K 6JT

Tel: 020 7493 0033

www.londonguitarstudio.com

info @ londonguitarstudio.com

JW: I first met Greg when he was still making guitars with Pete Biffen ten or twelve years ago, and they showed me a couple of their guitars which were okay but not great. I played my Fleta for them, and showed them the sort of sound I was getting from it. Later, Greg got in contact again and said he wanted to come and have another chat about guitars. In the course of that conversation, Greg told me that he loved the sound of the Fleta, but wanted to know what aspects of its sound I would like to improve on, assuming that were possible. I thought that was a great attitude, because it wasn’t just some smart arse trying to say, “Look, here’s a great guitar, try it. Often I have found that after trying out a new guitar at the request of a maker, you give them your opinion, pointing out weak spots as well as good things, and they just start arguing with you, trying to persuade you that it really is a better guitar than it is!

Greg impressed me from the start because he was always willing to listen. I told him that I liked the resonance of his instruments, because I sometimes found the Fletas a little too percussive, especially on the top string. Soon after that I came back for a tour with SKY, and Greg came to the hotel to see Kevin Peek and I with two guitars. At that stage, Greg didn’t even presume that I might give up playing the Fleta, so he just wanted to get some comments. Kevin Peek loved one of the guitars, and has still got it. The other guitar was one Greg had fashioned out of some old pieces of wood that he had had lying around, and I particularly liked that guitar and ended up doing a couple of recordings on it; it had a rather stripy pattern in the soundboard. And that’s basically where our association started in earnest.

AP-L: Was Greg Smallman using the carbon fiber bracing then?

JW: No, just the grid strutting, but no carbon fiber at that stage. I feel that the loudness of Greg’s guitars is a by-product of their musical qualities rather than an end in itself. One of the main changes in the sound that Greg achieved which is an improvement on the Fleta, is that the sound doesn’t change as the volume of the sound increases or decreases. The Fleta always tended to emphasize a more percussive sound at higher volumes, which is a deficiency in the traditional design of the guitar generally, and it is fundamentally an unmusical thing. Of course all instrumental sounds change somewhat as they increase in volume, but with the guitar it is inordinate, like hearing distortion as you turn up the hi-fi. The bottom line is that as you drive the conventional guitar harder, say in the Bach Chaconne or Albeniz, you’re getting a lot more plonk and thwack, and a lot less truly musical sound.

I should say that I’ve seen many other guitars by good makers which were lovely instruments, but none of them solved this problem the way Greg has, and for me as a soloist and ensemble performer that has been a crucial consideration. I’ve had a number of guitars from Greg and the latest was sent to me last November, which is a great instrument. The thing about Greg, and I’m sure that I’m not doing him any disservice in saying this, is that he is always experimenting and learning further, such as getting to know the properties of woods with different weights. But what’s important is that he knows what he’s doing with it all and why he’s doing it.

I’ve also noticed that Greg has been very open about the lattice bracing and has given seminars on it; he’s not just keeping all the knowledge to himself, which I think is admirable, because guitars don’t last like a violin will. So the benefits of his work will be felt very widely in the end, which is great. I know some guitar makers who are incredibly secretive, but thankfully Greg is not one of them, and I think that’s reflected in his very enquiring mind, an openness and honesty about his successes and failure, and willingness to adapt and change.

Like any creative person, Greg sometimes has doubts about his latest guitars; for example, when I saw him in Brisbane last year, he showed me two new guitars, and we compared them to mine and Julian Byzantine’s. Greg felt that perhaps the sound of the new ones was a little too dark, but I think that’s a matter of taste, because Ben Verdery’s in New York is also like that, and he loves it. He’s been showing it around the guitar scene in the States and getting a very enthusiastic response to it, and finds it blends very well with his wife’s flute playing, whom he performs duets with.

As you know, Julian Bream and I have quite different musical personalities and therefore also taste in guitars, but he was enormously impressed by Greg’s guitars, especially the sustain and dynamic range, and the fact that they respond so well to even the faintest touch. I don’t think that this means we’ll be seeing Julian playing one next week in concert, but I know he was very taken with them.

AP-L: A lot of people feel that the Bach Chaconne has been almost a signature piece of yours over the years. How do you view it?

JW: Funnily enough, I do feel it very much as a guitar piece rather than just a piece that works well on the guitar. Apart from the fact that it is a tour de force of the virtuoso variation style, and therefore a logical choice for a soloist, I very much feel its Iberian origins, both as a dance form and its Spanish style harmonies, and that’s certainly very guitaristic in a sense. It’s also the only one of its kind that Bach wrote – the Goldberg Variations were a set of variations on a tune, whereas the Chaconne is kind of an extended 4 bar baroque blues! So in that sense, it has a fascinating and magnificent mixture of folk music and high art, and the popular element in it strengthens the piece rather than trivializes it.

Also, although there are difficult sections in it, there are more difficult guitar pieces around. It’s a rewarding piece technically, because difficult parts sound like they’re worth it, which is not always the case with guitar music. From a musical point of view, it’s also very colorful because it doesn’t have the rigid formality of separate dance movements that you find in the normal baroque suite, but rather it moves along with a great variety in its melodic and rhythmic aspects, so its always a very enjoyable piece to play. I would cheerfully pick up the Chaconne almost any day of the week whether I’d practiced or not, because even if it wasn’t particularly clean, it would always sound good, and I’d never have a problem in deciding to include it in a concert program at the last minute, even if I haven’t played it in a while.

AP-L: Of all the prolific recordings you’ve done through your career, do you have any favorite albums you’ve recorded?

JW: Well, when it comes it solo records, not unnaturally I usually feel best about the ones I’ve done most recently, like the baroque album and the “Spirit of the Guitar.” That doesn’t mean I hate what 1 did in the sixties with Albeniz, but I feel I have done it better now on the Smallman; I will be re-recording more Spanish music in a couple more years like Granados’ Valses Poeticos. In some ways, the older records I feel fondest of are the collaborative efforts, like the Theodorakis with Maria Farandouri and the albums with Cleo Laine. Also, I still like the “Streets of London,” for sentimental reasons.

AP-L: Guitarists generally talk about their “influences”, the other guitarists or musicians who helped to shape their sound and style. Who were your main influences in that respect, aside from Segovia?

JW: I have always loved fiddle playing, so if anything I think 1 have been more influenced in some ways by violinists like Alan Loveday who was at the Royal College with me in the late 1950′s, especially in the baroque style of playing. I also learned a hell of a lot from Rafael Puyana, the harpsichordist, for things like Scarlatti, Bach and French music. Itzak Perlman is my favorite fiddle player, and I’ve done a record with him as well.

One thing I feel strongly is that it is the way someone plays is more important than whether it is “authentic” – for example, if you hear Heifetz or PerIman playing Bach, it could be argued that they are not playing in true baroque style, but their playing is far more enjoyable to listen to than a historically correct performance that is as dry as a bone. I think in regard to Baroque music it would be hard not to be impressed and influenced by some of the electrifying performances of baroque music that are around today, and the interpretation of baroque ornamentation has also advanced greatly compared to the boring stuff that was common years ago.

AP-L: Reading between the lines of your interview in George Clinton’s book on Segovia some years ago, there seemed to be an edge of tension between you and Segovia. Could you enlighten us on that?

JW: Yes, there always was really, and it has come out more as years have passed and I’ve felt a little more confident in talking about it. To be honest, I feel it has become necessary for me to become open about what my reservations with Segovia were. It’s all very well hiding behind respectful statements, but there was a personal gap between us that began in the mid-1950′s. Segovia had organized, or was involved in organizing, a guitar competition in Switzerland and asked me to compete in it. At the time, I would have been the logical winner, so it was an attractive idea. But my father was against it, partly because I was still at school and also because he felt I was still too young. My mother, however, supported the idea of my entering, so in the end it was really left to me to make the decision. As it turned out, 1 decided not to enter, and very soon after received an extremely angry phone call from Segovia, in which he abused me roundly in Spanish and called me all sorts of names of names.

Anyway, we all got over that one, but in the years that followed there always seemed to be an edge of tension when he was present for Summer School in Siena. Mostly, the players there like Alirio Diaz and myself would teach each other, because Segovia wasn’t always there a great deal, but when he did come, it often felt strained. As I’ve said on other occasions previously, he taught mainly by example – four bars here, four bars there, in which you were meant to imitate him – and I suppose that my training at the Royal College was giving me a more structured and structural approach to learning music, so it was sometimes hard to adapt to his very individual teaching style.

Having said all that, of course there were many positive aspects to Segovia and his influence on me as a guitarist and as a person. You couldn’t help being influenced by him and his sound when you were as close to it as I was. And he was extremely generous and usually very sweet tempered most of the time. But it would be wrong, especially now that he is gone, to assume that there were never any difficult moments between us, because occasionally there were, especially musically. As time passed, I found my interpretive approach becoming more direct, more linear, whereas Segovia’s was often shaped by the beautiful resonant qualities of his Hauser, which didn’t suit either my personality or musical inclinations in either solo or chamber music. Also, Segovia emerged during the age of the other great soloists like Kreisler and Heifetz, and some would argue that their period sound is dated, and it may be, but you can’t say its wrong, just different. But you can’t change the fact that it all began with Segovia and his sound. We wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for him.

JW: The answer is no, on two counts. No instrument is more difficult than another, because we have to establish by what standards we are making the judgment. Even if we take all three instruments playing the same piece, say the Bach G Minor fiddle fugue, it won’t help because if we compare it to the Liszt B Minor Piano Sonata, is it more or less difficult? Obviously, on the guitar the Liszt is going to be impossible, so we have to look at the total repertoire available to each instrument. Yet a 6 month old baby could probably hammer out a middle C on a piano whereas it couldn’t do that on a guitar until it was a few years old, but that doesn’t make it a candidate to play Chopin and Liszt!

The second point, regarding a true comparison involving note preparation, is also no. In basic respects, note preparation on the guitar is no harder than the fiddle, maybe even easier, but there may be certain aspects that are harder playing certain types of music. Personally, I don’t think that fingering or sight-reading is any harder on the guitar than on the violin. Some people don’t find holding down notes on the guitar very difficult at all, because they have great natural strength in their hands.

A-P-L: You obviously are one of those people…

JW: Funnily enough, I’m not! But that may be because I don’t practise a lot. Contrary to popular belief, I do practise, but not in vast amounts. If I practised five hours a day, I’d have stronger hands, but I don’t. Obviously some chord shapes are difficult to get because of the position and angle on the neck, but learning the first scale on the violin is also very awkward to do. Frankly, I think it’s a big cop-out on the part of guitarists; deliberate or not, its still a cop-out. So in summary, guitarists are bad technicians, bad sight-readers, bad at playing ensemble, bad listeners and don’t know their instrument as well as they should.

These things are all changing, as I have indicated, but still apply regarding sight-reading, as any student at a music college knows. I have been giving master classes in ensemble at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and the Royal College of Music in London for just that reason. It’s the history of the instrument that has given us this awful legacy, but we are learning from it and we are changing it. The guitar, in my opinion, is also becoming a more acceptable concert instrument because we are making the change.

Up till now, those works which allow the guitar to play in a chamber ensemble, such as the Bocherini Quintet, are a relative rarity and always make allowances for the guitar. As it is, a guitar student will often spend six months just learning the guitar part in order to play it at the end of year recital, which is ridiculous! The whole point of chamber music is its accessibility, and any student string player would be able to sight-read a dozen Mozart or Haydn Quartets before deciding which one to learn.

Here in Australia and elsewhere, as I have indicated, this is changing, particularly in Melbourne with Jochen Schubert, and Tim Kain in Canberra and previously in Manchester, as well as Trinity College and Paco Pena’s summer school in Spain. The answer at all levels is quite simple, irrespective of the standard, is to use existing chamber ensemble for other instruments from the enormous catalogue of music available; for example, the renaissance consort repertoire, the Terpsichore dances, the Mozart and Haydn Quartets, all in single line form. Most of the parts are playable directly, except perhaps for the viola clef, but even that is no great job to transcribe. In the cello part, it isn’t very often that you have to play its lowest note, C, but that isn’t a real problem.

I’m not suggesting that we should start hearing Mozart Quartets for four guitars at the Opera House, but this music is invaluable in developing all the skills I have been talking about. Another thing is that it also helps to widen the guitarist’s musical horizons. Fernando Sor’s music is pleasant enough, and Carulli’s, but if you play even an early Haydn Quartet, brother, you know you’re playing great music! Most of guitarists I meet who play in competitions still belong to the older school of guitar playing where ensemble work is rare, but a couple of the young ones, especially from Germany, are very good all-round musicians.

AP-L: What do you think about the problems of tone production for guitarists?

JW: I think it’s an extension of what we’ve just been talking about because one of the effects of having a tradition of solo repertoire, which is often music which is difficult to play, is that more emphasis is often put by a teacher on getting through the notes rather than playing the real substance of each note, and that’s a reason why we don’t concentrate continually from the beginning on tone production. By Grade 4, 5 and 6, for example, you’ve got Villa Lobos Preludes, which are much too difficult for those levels, but we’re lumbered with that problem.

Take a major third on the top strings with a bass accompaniment, the type of thing you’ll find in any simple guitar piece by Giuliani. If you hear a guitarist play it, it will sound fairly dull by comparison with how a string trio would play the same set of notes, where there would be much consideration of the phrasing and tone variation by each player. But because the guitarist finds such a thing superficially very easy to play, very often their approach to tone production is also superficial, with little or no consideration given to voice matching and tonal contrasts, even though the guitar has special difficulties because each of the three top strings has a quite distinct sound, so it’s both a blessing and a curse.

AP-L: You have an enviable reputation as a very powerful player, one capable of getting the maximum volume from an instrument – what are your thoughts on volume as opposed to tone?

JW: Yes, it’s understandable that guitarists generally have an obsession with volume, because the guitar is a quiet instrument, but I think that many guitarists confuse loudness with fullness; they should seek a focus in their sound rather than simply trying to fill a room – the thing about fullness of sound is that it also louder because of the extra body on the note. It’s the range of dynamics and tone in music that make it interesting to the ear, not volume per se. One thing that I loved about one of my two old Fleta guitars, was the ability it gave one to express that wide range of sound. I’ve always had strong nails, so that has helped too, but the reality is that the dynamic range that the guitar has is much less than the range, which actually carries in a concert hall.

AP-L: Does this explain your use of amplification, despite your obvious ability to produce a full, strong sound?

JW: I feel that subtle amplification overcomes most of these problems, but it seems ironic that many makers are now aiming directly at producing much louder instruments. I feel that the wide range of options available today for amplifying the guitar means that you can focus on the warm, intimate sounds of the guitar even in a large auditorium. The end result will be musically much more satisfying than trying just to produce a large, possibly unmusical, sound output, even if it is totally natural.

I know that to some critics any form of amplification is musical heresy, but I think that we have to go one step further. The guitar played in a large hall is not heard at its loveliest for most people in that hall; ideally, the guitar should not be played in a large hall if we want to experience the full range of its tone, because it doesn’t sound the same at a distance of 20 meters or more. This is because it’s a partly percussive instrument, and the percussive aspects carry more than its other dynamic and tonal qualities, so what we’re hearing is not really a true guitar sound. So it’s not whether you can hear a guitar at the back of the Sydney Opera House, but what you hear that counts. I find that amplification helps in that regard, but obviously it has to be well done.

John Williams

Published with the kind permission of Ron Payne

John Williams needs no introduction to classical guitarists, or indeed fine music lovers the world over; since his debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1958, he has attained enormous popularity with his voluminous recordings in both the classical repertoire and with his rock group, Sky. John was in Australia touring with the Australian Chamber Orchestra for performances of Rodrigo’s Aranjuez Concerto and Nourlangie, a new work for guitar, strings and percussion by Peter Sculthorpe. During this visit, Austin Prichard-Levy talked at length to John on topics of particular relevance and interest to classical guitarists, such as string selection, his known dislike of guitar competitions, his ambivalent relationship with Segovia, the impact of his technical prowess on a generation of young players, his views on guitar pedagogy, and his love of the Bach Chaconne, which many regard as his signature piece, such is the authority he has stamped on it with superlative concert performances and recordings.

AP-L: John, to begin with a prosaic, nonetheless very interesting question for a lot of guitarists, what strings do you currently use on your Smallman?

JW: At the moment, I’m using D’Addario trebles and basses, although the top string is a little heavier than the standard top string they make – I got them to thicken it up a bit. The biggest problem I find is getting the basses right; I often find that with Augustine Reds, for example, the 5th string is a little bit thin, whereas the D’Addario has more body without the brittleness that comes from going up to a higher tension string. Another problem is squeaks – no matter how you rationalize it, they’re always there although they can be minimized by both the player and the string manufacturer. I like D’Addario’s polished and semi-polished strings, although I haven’t tried the ones put out by LaBella. The polished string is a flat wound string, but the secret is in the winding and there seems to be a number of new approaches around to this.

A-P-L: What is your opinion of guitar competitions? Do you think they are good for developing young players, and do you support them?

JW: No, basically I don’t like or approve of competitions on any instrument. I don’t think music can be evaluated like a race – I know that’s an obvious thing to say and that there are many ifs and buts involved, because they do help some artists and concentrate the public’s attention on music. But I particularly don’t like the way many guitar competitions are run, the confusing way points are awarded differently in each round of a competition, and especially the over-exploitation of the “Big Winner” and the competitive values that puts on players and the activity of guitar playing itself. Winning is a matter of taste in most cases, and there are often many other equally deserving competitors other than just the First Prize recipient. I feel it would be fairer to have a select group of finalists, each of whom receives the same award and status.

I have served on juries in the past, but these days I refuse to take part, and I feel it is important to take that stand otherwise your reservations have no meaning. Having said all that, I know it happens anyway and sometimes there is sponsorship involved which does help the general public interest and support. But it still doesn’t need to be a cut and dried thing, where each finalist is ranked as precisely as 1,2,3. I think it is those competitive values that are wrong, not the celebration of excellence in music as such. I have talked about the idea of setting up a competition where this other approach is used, but nothing definite has emerged from it yet; it may take some time to develop.

AP-L: So would you support a competition here in Australia if it were organized along the lines you have indicated rather than the usual prize system?

JW: (laughs) Well, that’s like when a politician gets asked whether they will support something if x,y and z happens. Let’s wait and see if it occurs first!

AP-L:Julian Bream has remarked in A Life on the Road that he was glad he came onto the guitar scene in the 1950′s because it gave him the time to develop a proper musical personality without the pressure to achieve quickly that exists today. Do you feel the same way? Would you feel as confident starting out today as you might have been in the late 50′s and early 60′s?

JW: I don’t remember that from his book, but it’s a very good point. There’s no doubt that it is true, and Julian has achieved that development magnificently, and I think coming somewhat in his footsteps in England also made it a little easier for me. I suppose both of us have found it less pressured in the UK by being the leading players there and while Julian and I have different attitudes about some things, we are close friends and both of us feel the same about allowing musical abilities to develop at their own pace; to some extent that’s a another justification for expressing reservations about competitions.

AP-L: To many players, you are an icon of the guitar, due to the power of your technique and playing style. Has it ever bothered you that a generation of young players have sought merely to emulate your technical prowess and perhaps have neglected discovering their own musical identity in the process?

JW: Well, if it’s like that, then it’s a pity! I know that that is the case to a point, but if one doesn’t develop one’s own musical personality, that’s a major problem facing any player. I guess I have been lucky to an extent, because having a well formed technique from an early age I haven’t really had to think too hard about it, but it has always been at the service of musical goals rather than an end in itself for me, and it should be that way with all musicians. I suppose it is part of the history of the guitar that guitarists have been obsessed both with technique and also the technical aspects of the instrument.

I often notice students preoccupied with fingerings and not notes, much less sounds, and yet at the same time finding it difficult to immediately locate C sharp on the 4th string, say. Of course, if students do see me as Mr. Technique, then that can also reflect negatively on me too, because Mr. Technique isn’t usually also Mr. Music! But in the last five years or six years, there has been a very great acceleration in the awareness of some very basic musical facts by guitarists, and that’s a topic I would like to talk more about because so much is changing for the better.

Another thing I’ve noticed in master classes, is that players will come on and play the most difficult solo works from memory, and yet if you give them a part to play in one of the easier Haydn String Quartets, as I often do, they’re lost in no time, and have a very poor sense of ensemble or timing. Guitarists are among the worst sight-readers I’ve come across. Julian Bream and I are both dead average sight-readers by orchestral standards, but among guitarists, we are outstanding! This is an area of the guitar that has been poorly taught up until recently.