I was sorry to learn this week of the death of Joanna Wiesner at the age of 96. You couldn’t be very involved in choral music in Bath without coming across her, in my case mostly through the South West Festival Chorus and my occasional outings with Bath Minerva Choir.
She could organise anyone and anything, and I first encountered her doing this in the ultimate choral test – Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. She was putting on concerts with the SWFC as recently as 2019. And there was no better source for Bath’s classical music-related gossip, dispensed willingly – I remember being filled in on lots of it beside an infinity pool in Goa.
Joanna was a regular sight in the audiences at concerts, especially of amateur groups. I once sat in the front row when attending a concert in St Stephen’s Church, only to hear her complain loudly just behind me – in that church every word uttered nearby is audible – that her view had been blocked. (I didn’t dare turn round and suggest, as I would have done with some people, that she might have avoided this by sitting in the front row herself. Sadly, other reasons made me decide not to stay after the interval of that concert.)
She would have been in her mid-70s already when I first met her, but such was her energy that you didn’t really notice her age. It was perhaps only given away by characteristics of her generation such as the expectation that you would reply to any communication, including emails – which made it rather hard to end any e-conversation with her.
I will try to look out for obituaries as I gather she’d already had a very full life before I knew her.