Biography
Photographs by James Barke
'Her versions are full of charm and grace, but also, when warranted, a certain virtuosic passion that brings out all the hidden nuances of these atmospheric pieces.'
(Classical Net, 31 October 2005)'Kirsten Johnson's loving mastery of this music and skilful, nuanced pianism are a delight.'
(Classics Today, 26 August 2003)
Kirsten Johnson’s recordings and performances have delighted listeners around the world. She has performed in Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Japan and throughout the United States and United Kingdom. Her CDs have been given airplay on BBC Radio 3, on public radio stations across the U.S., and on radio stations in many European countries. In the UK she has performed in the Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room, the Royal Academy of Music, the Holywell Music Room, Oxford, and the Austrian Institute, London.
Building on the success of Këngë: Albanian Piano Music (Guild 7257), Kirsten Johnson has compiled a second album of pieces titled Rapsodi: Albanian Piano Music, Volume 2. On the release of Këngë, critics marvelled at the charm of this unknown repertoire:
‘Johnson plays with nuance and color; the recording is rich and resonant.’ (American Record Guide, 1 March 2004) ‘Kirsten Johnson expounds all this repertoire with manifest sympathy and skill. An unexpected delight.’
(BBC Music Magazine, 1 June 2003)
Johnson’s interest in Albanian piano music originates from a visit to Albania in June 1993, shortly after communism had fallen. She stayed with the composer Llazar Morcka (b. 1923) and his family in Tirana, and was given tours of the Jordan Misja School of Music as well as the Music Faculty at the Academy of Arts. She performed, gave a masterclass and met many composers, pianists and musicologists. Following this visit, Kirsten Johnson decided to make Albanian piano music the subject of the dissertation for her Doctor of Musical Arts, received from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1997. A Survey of Albanian Piano Literature is published through UMI of Ann Arbour, Michigan (wwwlib.umi.com/dxweb/). In her study of Albanian piano music, Johnson interviewed Kozma Lara, Ramadan Sokoli, Çesk Zadeja, Feim Ibrahimi and Alberto Paparisto. She has performed this repertoire in recitals across the United States, the United Kingdom and Albania. The release of Këngë: Albanian Piano Music was followed in 2003 by Johnson’s fourth tour of Albania, with her concert in Tirana a gala event broadcast on national television.
In 2005 Johnson released two CDs of nineteenth-century piano pieces: Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen - Piano Music (GMCD 7277) and Hermann Götz - Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen - Piano Music (GMCD 7282). This was the first recording of most of these works. ‘The American-born pianist Kirsten Johnson dispatches the music with a flamboyance and panache that betrays her young age but certainly not her precocious talent, and she definitely succeeds in capturing all the nuances of the score with disarming ease.’ (Classical Net, 3 November 2005) ‘Kirsten Johnson advocates this little-known repertoire and does it with panache and aplomb.’ (Minnesota Public Radio, 26 May 2005)
Johnson was born in Virginia, USA, but now resides in Oxford, England. As a concert performer she has wide-ranging musical interests and a large repertoire of pieces from the pre-Baroque to the present, from countries around the world. She graduated summa cum laude from Evangel University, Missouri, USA, at the age of nineteen with a Bachelor of Music in piano performance. After receiving her Master of Music degree in piano performance from the University of North Texas under a Teaching Fellowship in Piano, she studied in Vienna at the Hochschule für Musik as a Rotary International Foundation Scholar. She completed her DMA under Richard Cass at UMKC, having been awarded a Kemper Doctoral Fellowship. Dr. Johnson built her repertoire and explored the music of Alkan in her post-doctoral studies in England with Ronald Smith, FRAM. In 2004, she gave the world première of Raymond Head's Of Birds and Bells at a concert held at the Royal Academy of Music in London in memory of Ronald Smith.
Kirsten Johnson is a member of the Performer's and Composer's Section of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, London.