The profession of accompanist is a lot more involved than playing the piano while someone else is singing Lieder. It is probably one of the most difficult musical arts because it requires so many skills, beyond being a good pianist, united in the same musician: the ability to be a team player, to plan a concert program, a profound understanding of singing preferably through professional voice training, and so the list goes on. It is little surprise that at top level this very specialised field is dominated by just a handful of outstanding musicians, one of which is German-born Wolfram Rieger who lives in Munich part-time. His full schedule leads him around the world, partnering some of the most famous singers of our time: Thomas Hampson, Barbara Bonney and Thomas Quasthoff, to name but a few. We managed to catch up with him for a rare interview, in an Italian coffee shop in Munich. ...
TT: As a team, performing the Wunderhorn Songs, you and Thomas Hampson are unbeatable. Do you have a favorite song?
WR: I am so fascinated by the Wunderhorn cycle per se that I like all of them. They all touch on some essential part of our souls, involve us, being filled with the heart and the spirit of the composer. Some of Mahler's composing is rather challenging, however, and some songs take more work than others. Revelge, for instance, has some technically nasty bits - as though you didn't have enough to do, just working yourself through the already challenging score, every once in a while Mahler throws in these really difficult trills that are not exactly in the most fortunate position for the pianist but, from the composer's viewpoint, could not have been put elsewhere. The Irdische Leben is also difficult to play because you have to give the piece a certain character, the unrelenting aspect of the threshing machine that you want to keep up throughout the song, this pitiless daradaradara...
TT: When watching you at the piano, it seems as though you are very much in tune with your singers and actually breathe along with them. Is that so?
WR: You have to do that if you want to be a good accompanist. I was fortunate in that I came into contact with singing early on. While still at music school, I took voice lessons. I also had my own choir for a while, which I conducted. I loved doing that. So, aside from studying piano and violin for a double major, I did conducting and singing as minors. What is so good about taking singing lessons for an accompanist is that you learn how singing works, what happens with the air, and you also learn the terminology. So when someone speaks of singing on the breath you know what it feels like. It's good if you can express yourself in the same terminology as the singers do.
TT: So it is a great thing for a singer to have an accompanist who knows singing from his own experience. What about the other way round? Wouldn't it be good for you to work with a singer who also happens to be trained as a pianist?
WR: Yes and no. Most singers know a little about piano - it is usually part of the training at school. But a singer who has substantial training as a pianist is, perhaps, not the best thing to happen to an accompanist because then he tends to be easier on you. I have learned best from singers who knew very little about piano playing. They would say: hey, can't you do this a bit smoother, better, fresher ... whatever. Whereas a singer who also happens to be a pianist would say: considering that it is such a difficult passage, well done. From the non-pianist's points of view, can't be done does not exist even for the difficult passages. If you want to be a good accompanist, you need to be technically perfect but you also have to work out what precisely you want to bring across, with this piece or that. It is up to you what you make of the work.
TT: You are one of the most successful accompanists in the world. Teaching young people is an important part of your own life now. You have just returned from Barcelona, Spain, where you did a course in Lied for young students there.
WR: I do this every year. It is such a delight to work with these young people. They are so talented, attentive, and eager to learn. Spain is one of my favorite countries and I go there a lot. In Spain, as in Berlin at the music academy, I teach the team. The singer learns how to work with the accompanist and vice versa. I do not teach singing per se, although I may make the odd remark to the singer but not in the context that a voice teacher would. The pianist is someone I will talk to in technical terms also, however.
TT: You are also a professor for Lied at the Hans Eisler Music Academy in Berlin. This is known as one of the best music schools in the world, which tends to succeed in getting the top musicians in their field as teachers. Thomas Quasthoff is there, Julia Varady... so, admission requirements must be quite tough.
WR: They have to be. Music is a very competitive business. There are so many hopeful young musicians. Few actually succeed in making a living at it at all and fewer still make it to the top. It is a matter of having to be cruel to be kind. When I see that someone doesn't have what it takes, I either don't admit them in the first place or, if it only becomes clear during the course, I take them aside and tell them that it is better to call it quits. It is a postgraduate course I teach, but the students are still young people. What sense would it make to teach someone, take years out of their life, only for them to end up unemployed and maybe too old then to start over with a new profession? So when there are really fundamental problems, I prefer to keep matters short and as painless as possible.
TT: Let's say someone comes to you and wants to enter your class. He or she is a great pianist, could easily hold his own on stage as a concert pianist. But now he comes with a singer in tow, they do a Lied together, and you realise that he has no sensitivity whatsoever for the singer. They are not in tune. The prospective student is not a team player. Is this something you can teach?
WR: That would be one of the typical problems that instantly disqualify from admission. If the team player mentality is not there, I tell the person to go home. This is the difference between Lied and opera. With Lied, you are very much dependent on one another. There is only the two of you. It is a bit like two people climbing a mountain together. You depend on each other. With Lied, you can imagine it like singer and accompanist are connected through an invisible rope. If you don't like the other, you don't let go of the rope and let him fall down, but you may not be sufficiently in tune with him to help him, as if by reflex, when something goes wrong. I cannot imagine making music with someone whom I do not like. Luckily, this has never happened to me. It is also impossible to work with someone who is on a musical path that you do not agree with.
TT: This really is teamwork, isn't it? An accompanist does not merely follow the singer. You are a team and within that team you are equals, both having your own say.
WR: That goes on all the way through, including on stage during the performance. I don't know how much of this the audience notices but imagine two people connected by a string. It's not a one-way street. Each of us pulls this way or that way. The string is elastic like a rubber band. Sometimes he gives and I take, and then it goes vice versa. It can happen, though rarely, that someone doesn't give at all. Then, eventually, the string will tear. But if it is good teamwork then everyone can pull and it is nice to feel that they are following me also. It is always give and take. Everyone shows the direction he wants to go in and the other follows, or not. If I notice that he doesn't follow I can increase my energy should I insist on going a particular direction. But he could also increase his resistance and make me realize: this is not something we are going to do today. It is all a matter of being spontaneous but on the base that everyone has to know basically what they want. That is what rehearsals are for. It's not just a random process.
TT: When there are no concerts, how much time do you spend practicing a day? Do you sometimes leave it out altogether?
WR: Heavens, no. You always pay for that. No way. The very least is half an hour of technical exercises a day. If I do that, I feel fit but it is the absolute minimum I can get away with. Usually, it is more like two to four hours, depending on what is coming up.
TT: How exactly can an accompanist work with the singer to help him, here or there?
WR: There are some obvious ways, and some not so obvious. If someone is hoarse, for instance, there is not much you can do. On the other hand, if a singer struggles with the high notes, you play the piece a semi-tone or tone lower, which makes a lot of difference. If you notice that someone is running out of breath you can tighten up the long phrase a little. I think this is comparable to what happens in any other sports team. There is no such thing as a catalogue of reactions that you pull out of your sleeve, like: when this happens, I do that. Rather, if you are a good team then you intuitively feel what the other needs right now to make things easier on him.
TT: You watch your singers' breathing and breathe along. Does this mean you can't be a world-class accompanist if you do not have professional training as a classical singer?
WR: I think at the very least you have to be able to imagine what it is like, and to understand what is involved in singing. I would caution against underestimating intuition. Many of my colleagues, truly brilliant accompanists, have a great sense of for singer and I have no idea whether any of them took formal singing lessons. Yet they still know where the strengths and weaknesses of each singer lie, how long someone can hold a tone and so on. That is different for each singer, naturally. With Thomas Hampson, for instance, I know that at a point where I may need to start worrying with another singer, I am still very far from even having to think of worrying with him. A big part of this job is about intuitively knowing what the singer is going to do, so you need a certain amount of sensitivity so that you sense when there is even a minute problem. You have to have good hearing, also. This is not about the theory-related, analytical sense of hearing that you need in music theory classes. Our kind of hearing goes on a human-to-human level. You notice: oops, this is going in a direction it shouldn't be going, and then you jump in and do your bit. It becomes a problem if you simply don't notice things like that going on. If the given key is not so advantageous to the singer we may end up playing the work a semi-tone lower, which makes a great improvement.
TT: Who transposes it?
WR: That is something I do inside my head. For instance, this is another one of the aptitudes you need as a good accompanist. You really have to be on your toes. When I transpose in my head, rather than on paper, I am forced to remember it. Next time round, I'll be even faster when playing the transposed version of the piece. As an accompanist working at the level I work at, you come across the need to transpose always. In the recent Munich concert with Thomas Hampson, for instance, there were two Lieder that we did in different keys: one by Liszt and one by Strauss.
TT: Who worked out the Munich program?
WR: Thomas Hampson and I did that together. We are in constant communication when it comes to working out a new program. Then, in rehearsal, we work on it again. He is very strict about choosing pieces that he has a personal connection with. If he does not like a certain work, he leaves it aside. Other than that, one of the criteria we use when putting together a program is that we hope it leads on a certain path that can be walked on together with the audience. A concert program without concept is not for us. For the Munich concert, for instance, we took Liszt and Mahler and Strauss. We offered our public the themes of love, war and death. Why? Love is a very nice subject to make music about, isn't it? Then there is the stark contrast, death, which is the ultimate threat even to the purest of loves. So, these are the two basic things we are confronted with in life: love and death, and everything that happens in between. Mahler fits very well into that concept because he comes with his war-songs from the Wunderhorn that are not actually war-songs but anti-war songs. All the seemingly glorification of war collapses into an anti-war theme. For instance this in-your-face commentary that he gives us in Revelge...
TT: With these ever increasing tralali tralalai passages, the tambour beating his drum all the way into death, and beyond...
WR: Exactly. So when Mahler describes war, it becomes an anti-war song because what he does it to show the futility of war. At the same time, even in Revelge, there are the themes of love and good-bye.
TT: Thomas Hampson, in an interview, described the image of this song's final scene. Do you also imagine the plot as you play?
WR: Of course, it makes it easier if you enter deeply into the song. But there is a fine line between entering into the story and entering into the story too much. You don't want to grimace too much as the pianist but at the same time you need to feel what you are playing, not only the music but also the action behind the music. If facial expressions seem synchronized, it is the expression of both, singer and accompanist, feeling the same, which is only natural since you are working yourselves through the same song. You have to feel the song. There is no way around it. Maybe you don't see it on everyone's face, but when it comes to the crunch, it is something we all do as accompanists, this diving into the story and music.
Page created: 7.Aug.2004 - Edit