<<  -- 8 --  Tess Crebbin    DIVING INTO THE MUSIC

TC: Speaking of being united: 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 for the 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 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.

TC: Now I understand why you said this is not a job for people who cannot be team players.

WR: 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, to pick up on even the most minute of problems. 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 at 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.

TC: You always do ...

WR: I hope.

TC: Personally, have you got perfect pitch?

WR: No. In my profession it may even be disadvantageous because it happens that we play a piece in a different key. If the given key is not so advantageous to the singer we may end up playing the work a semitone lower, which makes a great improvement.

TC: 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.

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