Finding the right pianist is extremely important. After all, there’s more to a song recital than the singer. Someone who knows this to be true is Julius Drake, pianist and curator of the Temple Song Series in London. Drake works regularly with the likes of Alice Coote, Joyce Didonato, Lorraine Hunt Liebersen, Matthew Polenzani, Ian Bostridge, Gerald Finley, Olaf Bär, Thomas Allen, Felicity Lott, Christoph Pregardien, Simon Keenlyside, Willard White and Ann Sofie Von Otter and many others.
In a special interview for Classical Singer, Julius Drake explores the question: What should a singer look for in their pianist?
First of all, why is the relationship between pianist and singer so important?
Well, we are making chamber music together so we need to feel that each of us is aiming for the same ideal. Perfection is not possible but together we can bring the music and words to life for the audience in the hall. After all, we have a responsibility to the music these great composers have left us.
Over your career, you have worked with many of the finest vocalists known today. How important is it for a pianist to be able to adapt to each artist?
You adapt of course because different people bring out different aspects of your own character and personality. Most important perhaps is that you enjoy sharing your love for music because this is infectious. Essentially it is a great pleasure to meet fellow artists with the same love of music. Yes, we are all different but this is what makes life so interesting.
Many pianists talk of a kind of ‘telepathy’ between themselves and the singer, so that they often know what the singer is going to do before they do it. How can a pianist develop this kind of ‘sixth sense’?
The ‘telepathy’ is in the intensity of listening to each other as you interpret the written notes. This is the wonderful thing about chamber music – whether you are sharing the stage and the music with an instrumentalist or a singer there is constant communication between you. The music exists on paper and the two of you bring it to life for the audience. It is a live performance – it can go anyway that feels right to you both in that moment in time when you are both are on stage.
The job of the pianist can also include the need to cover up errors, to save the singer from embarrassment. This might include hiding the fact that they have come in early, skipped ahead, or had a memory lapse. What advice would you give a pianist when learning to cover such mistakes?
Remember you have the music in front of you and the singer usually doesn’t so stay calm and keep your head!
Drawing on your wealth of experience, what other key attributes you would advise singers to look for in their pianist?
Well several points are very important for a pianist who works in the world of song. First of all, look for a passionate commitment to the repertoire. The song repertoire is one of the great treasure troves of classical music and a Zionist zeal to explore it and present it to the world is a definite requirement. A strong work ethic is also a requirement – there are a lot of notes to learn and in addition you have to play them in different keys! A love of words and the sound of different languages is also very important – songs after all are poems set to music. An ability and wish to make the piano sound part of a whole is vital for all chamber music playing. Finally a boundless enthusiasm and love for music and the power it has to make life better for all who hear it.
Can you tell me what you most enjoy about working with singers?
The inspiring and life enhancing music that so many great composers have left us to explore and bring to life in performance.
The next performance in Julius Drake’s Temple Song Series will take place on 21 March at Middle Temple Hall in London. Two of the world’s leading singers, uncle and niece Christoph Prégardien and Julia Kleiter, join Julius Drake for a wonderful program of songs and duets which combines Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn setting poems by their favorite poets, Goethe and Heine.
