When it comes to artistic stuff, I’m a man obsessed with three things: Music, Words and Voice.
Obsessions two and three have led me to this working life as one of those pianists who rarely set foot on a concert platform without a singing colleague to support. We strange creatures of course grapple with a set of challenges mostly different from those of our solo piano cousins. For me, four questions present themselves most frequently:
1 In general, is this singer free to sing his/her absolute best and serve the music and text truthfully, with me at the keyboard?
2 Am I really involved and emotionally engaged with the story-telling process, without any unwelcome pulling of focus?
3 Is my piano playing refined, rhythmically exciting, harmonically responsive and tonally colourful in its own right?
4 Is the balance of the voice mixed with my sound absolutely ideal?
When all is going swimmingly on a song recital stage – singer in full, free flight, audience hanging on every breath, word and vocal contour – the answer to all of these questions for the pianist should surely be yes. For the purposes of this little essay, I’d like to put the middle two questions to one side, as they concern things that can at least be given plenty of thought during private piano practice, without the singer. If the first question is the most important for all concerned (including the audience!), then the last is perhaps the one that most often presents an obvious problem. Balance can be a real bugger to get right!
This brings us to the real reason for this post. The subject of whether or not a piano lid is fully opened often seems peripheral, hardly crucial, and yet I’ve witnessed (and taken part in) so many heated discussions on it! For my part, it’s usually a case of very delicately persuading well-meaning promoters/stage managers/relatives that they’re commenting on what is a purely musical decision for the performers alone to make, and that their forthright opinions on the matter are akin to telling a string quartet that they should change their seating formation or bowings…
As with so many areas of the accompanist’s job, flexibility will always be needed on our part here, and the final decision on the height of a piano lid in a song recital must ultimately be made by one person: the singer. This will for me always be a given, as a crucial part of answering the first question in my list above. They have to stand right in front of our instrument, and so the height of the lid affects hugely the amount of piano sound that they will be surrounded by. That said, I think there’s room for more experimentation with open lids, and that it’s a shame to automatically assume that the short or half sticks are the only options available to us, or that we should always play it safe. I’m probably opening a can of worms, but here follow some of my humble musings on the matter!
In some situations, it soon becomes obvious that the piano will almost certainly need to be half closed, or worse:
– If the instrument is horribly bright and brassy – a concerto warrior better suited to slicing through symphony orchestras than giving a singer a bed of sound – it will soon give the singer a headache on full stick, even if sensitively handled.
– With extremely well-established or some ‘old school’ singers, many years (or decades…) of hearing the piano sound emerge from below the ear – or in some instances even from within a totally closed casing – mean that a fully-opened piano will simply be too disorientating. Plus, they’re famous and sell the tickets, and we’re not and don’t, so if we want to get hired again, what they say goes, obviously 🙂
– At the other end of the spectrum, fledgling students or very young singers with particularly delicate voices may soon find themselves pushing and forcing their vocal technique, as they can’t quite believe that they will ever be heard over the full piano sound ringing in their ears.
– The pianist may need/want more practice at hearing a voice ‘through’ their own sound, and more feedback from professors/colleagues, or simply more work on refining technique, voicing, colour and soft playing.
This last point reminds me of the first of three personal ‘Eureka!’ moments on the subject of open piano lids, in which I realised that it could partly be something that’s tied to particular countries and their differing musical cultures. i) Back in 2004, I was in Berlin, observing one of many Lied classes given by Prof. Wolfram Rieger at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule. We were in a small room, with a rather bright and forthright Steinway B, and yet the lid was fully opened for every single singer/pianist duo that came for a lesson that day (as – I soon realised – was always the case). Rieger made clear that managing the instrument was the pianist’s responsibility, that we would come across some really beastly pianos out there on the recital circuit, and that a bad workman blames his tools! The pianist students were constantly getting used to dealing with a bright instrument and balancing well, while at the same time enjoying the the possibility of exploring the full range of tonal bloom and colour a fine piano is capable of. The singers, it follows, were constantly getting used to singing with the support of a full ‘halo’ of piano sound in their ears, and trusting their duo partner to handle balance effectively. An open piano was the norm. It goes without saying that I’ve never, ever, seen Wolfram Rieger perform alongside a singer with anything other than a fully opened instrument, no matter what size the voice, such is his control and finesse. ii) A few years later, during the ‘Das Lied – International Singing Competition’ in Berlin, it struck me as interesting that the default stage setting for competitors included the lid of the huge Steinway D up on full stick. There were very few balance problems with the duos I heard, and the interesting pianists were able to produce some beautifully atmospheric colours and textures. They also dared to take the piano sound down to the merest whisper, without the singer feeling naked or robbed of support. iii) A year or so after that, I gave a recital with a German singer in Switzerland. We arrived at the venue for rehearsal and discovered a nine foot long beast of a Steinway with enormous bass and middle registers. I, British to the core, made doubtful faces and timidly suggested it might be better for the piano lid to come down to half, whereupon the singer looked at me as if I’d just suggested we give the concert wearing nothing but our underpants. We kept it open, I listened like mad, and we had a fantastic time.
In the UK, on the other hand, in conservatoire Lied classes the piano is usually completely closed. As a quick fix in small teaching rooms, this certainly keeps more of the piano sound away from the singer’s ears, but the pianists surely don’t listen for balance as carefully, and certainly don’t have to work as hard to maintain real control over our instrument. In UK singing competitions, the default setting for the piano is usually half stick. With half-closed instruments, certainly as an audience member, am I alone in often feeling frustrated at the resulting ‘hardening’ of the sound, the lack of tonal bloom, and the fact that the piano isn’t actually any quieter at all? I’m reminded of power showers. Instead of a pleasant, round-edged water jet that fills more space but does so gently, we’re on the receiving end of a sharp, pin-pointed laser beam that goes straight for the point between the eyes.
In concluding then, shouldn’t we be braver when it comes to at least experimenting with opening the piano lid to its full height more often? If the pianist is armed with solid technique and control, along with some experience in the art of accompanying singers, and cares deeply enough about achieving ideal balance, if the singer is comfortable with the sensation of a rich bed of supportive sound surrounding them from above as well as below, I would argue that we all open ourselves up to a richer palette of sounds and colours with with to tell our beautiful stories.
Thanks for reading, and If I’m soon lynched by a mob of irate voice teachers, you’ll know why…
It’s that time of year when the fog of Christmas excess starts to lift, and so it must be time to announce the singers for the 2016 Lied in London concerts at Queen’s Gate Terrace! Now well-established and popular events, these intimate song recitals are devised and accompanied by pianist Gary Matthewman. We hope to see you there, and to chat with you over wine and cheese afterwards! Ticket details etc below.
songpianist 