When Great Accompanists Make Great Musical Partners

The vocal artists may be the star of the show, but not without the underrecognized pianists who provide the musical support.

German tenor Jonas Kaufmann and pianist Helmut Deutsch perform on July 22, 2022 in Munich, Germany. The art of the accompanist is often overlooked by the public. Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images

I had the great privilege of spending one hour being coached by Dalton Baldwin (1931–2019), one of the world’s great accompanists. He not only played the piano like a god, but he was an excellent teacher of the nuances of vocal literature. He coached me on the beautiful Berlioz song cycle, “Les Nuits d’été.” As a dedicated, but unknown singer, I feared his demeanor would be professional but indifferent. The opposite was true. His immediate absorption of the essence of my voice and singing was stunning, his teaching, profound.

Make no mistake, a good accompanist does far, far more than just play all the right notes. The best of them have an intimate, thorough knowledge of the musical repertoire being performed, the ability of the singer or instrumental soloist they are accompanying, and the laser focus and skill to adapt tempo, dynamics, and tone color to what that soloist is doing, even if it’s a surprise.

And there are always surprises. Occasionally, the singer makes a last-minute request that the accompanist transpose the song, which means to change the key to make the song lower or higher. Not many pianists can make that technically tricky adjustment on the spot—or with little notice. The great accompanists can—and do. An accompanist is a collaborator, a teammate. In some circumstances, a fine accompanist is the soloist’s savior.

Student soloists learn this early on while they’re studying at universities. Everyone wants the expert accompanist, who is solid as a rock at the keyboard and can cover for a soloist’s memory lapse by quietly feeding them a lyric—whether in English, French, or German—push the tempo faster, or gently pull it back. This is especially welcome in a performance test called a jury when the audience is made up of adjudicating professors.

The sense of security a performer feels having such an expert playing for them is tremendous. They know that pianist will take care of them. All of the artists in this story were known for their compassion toward their collaborating partners, musical and human wisdom, and kindness.

The Gold Standard

Martin Katz (born 1945), dubbed “the gold standard of musical accompanists” by the New York Times and named the “Collaborative Pianist of the Year” in 1998 by Musical America Worldwide magazine, is one of the great accompanists who sits on the pinnacle of this largely unsung, little-lauded profession. He has accompanied some of the greatest performers, all of whom know his worth. “Even when I’m standing alone on the concert stage, Martin Katz is there at the piano and it’s the combination that makes the success,” said opera singer Marilyn Horne in her book, “Marilyn Horne: My Life.”

Born in Los Angeles, Katz began piano at the age of 5, and it was when he began accompanying his high school’s glee club that he became smitten with playing for voices. “Practicing Bach and Chopin preludes in a room is not only lonely, but limiting—you come in contact with no musical colors other than the piano itself. Working with the glee club not only turned me on to the varied colors of vocal ensembles, but also the gregarious nature of making music with other people,” Katz said in a Musical America Worldwide article.

Katz wrote “The Complete Collaborator: The Pianist as Partner.” It’s been called the “seminal textbook on the subject.”

‘Prince of Accompanists’

British pianist Gerald Moore (1899–1987) during his visit to Finland. Public Domain

Gerald Moore, born in England in 1899, was the first pianist credited with raising the status of accompanists. Called “the prince of accompanists” by the New York Times, Moore expressed sentiments similar to those of Katz.  He so loved accompanying, he said, “If I had five times the ability as I have, I would still not want to do anything other than what I do.”

He considered having “an ear for balance” and artistry the most important qualities for his art. A London Times critic noted “that artists who performed with him found ’their voices or instrumental tone given an extra dimension or, to change the metaphor, their black-and-white photographs mysteriously transformed into color.'”

Artists he played for included the great German art song singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, lyric soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, soprano Victoria de los Angeles, and cellist Pablo Casals. Additionally, he was a man of great wit and comedic timing.

He gave numerous talks on accompanying, and according to pianist Joseph Cooper, “he revealed a sense of verbal timing of which any professional comic would be proud. His unique blend of wit and wisdom not only pleased the cognoscenti but also won over ordinary people who had no idea that classical music could be so fun.”

Moore authored books including “The Unashamed Accompanist,” “Am I too Loud?: Memoirs of an Accompanist,” “Farewell Recital: Further Memoirs,” and “Furthermore: Interludes in an Accompanist’s Life.”

“The Unashamed Accompanist” includes the chapters, “Partnership,” “Preparation,” “Practicing,” “Rehearsing,” “Performance,” “Bad Habits,” and “Sight Reading and Transposition”—clues to essential ingredients of his art.

Pavarotti’s Partner

Digital recording of "Pavarotti at Carnegie Hall" with John Wustman on the piano. Internet Archives

“It is really something to be able to come here and make real a piece of music in this way—when you are alone on the stage with nothing else—nothing, just a fantastic pianist like I have,” legendary tenor Luciano Pavarotti said of John Wustman (born 1930), his primary accompanist, in a 1989 interview.

Wustman and Pavarotti’s collaborations included an acclaimed 1978 recital at the Metropolitan Opera House, which was followed by a decade of televised recitals. Tenor Richard Tucker, baritone William Warfield, soprano Eleanor Steber, and mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel are among the long list of great artists with whom Wustman collaborated. His performance with Russian mezzo-soprano Irina Arkhipova won the 1973 Gran Prix du Disque, for their legendary recording of Mussorgsky’s “Songs and Dances of Death.” He received a 2007 The World of Song Award, presented by the Lotte Lehmann Foundation.

Wustman expressed exasperation that appreciation of the high art of accompanying has been slow. “Great composers of lieder accompanied their own pieces,” he said in a 1983 New York Times article. “I’m sure they weren’t treated like lackeys. We read about the plight of accompanists from 1880 on—I don’t know how they became these little trolls under the stage.”

Unequal Treatment

Dalton Baldwin’s playing in a recital “was worthy of a review all his own,” New York Times critic John Rockwell wrote of Baldwin’s 1978 performance with soprano Elly Ameling. Rockwell continued, “This was piano playing of a lyrical and dramatic sympathy and rhythmic energy that superbly partnered the singing.”

Baldwin began his training at Juilliard, then he studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He studied with the great music composition teacher Nadia Boulanger, then, in 1954, he began playing for French baritone Gérard Souzay, who was considered a great interpreter of French mélodie, or art song.

Baldwin became an expert in French vocal literature, but he, too, lamented the substrata attention that accompanists traditionally got. He recalled of another Ameling collaboration in Salzburg, that “his name was as large as hers on the poster, which gave him ‘a good feeling’—though, he added, ‘Of course, I didn’t get anything like her fee,’” New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini wrote in Baldwin’s 2019 obituary.

The great accompanists are a unique kind of spiritual human being. They truly love the collaboration. Baldwin said, “I worship the human voice. There’s nothing like singing; it’s a romance when you share the music and the poem. The voice is God’s instrument. I want them to enjoy making music. That’s what it should be about: la joie.”

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