Pianists can learn from Joyce DiDonato and the vocal model

The renowned mezzo soprano, Joyce DiDonato hosted three inspiring Masterclasses at Carnegie Hall’s intimate recital venue this holiday season, and made “process” her resonating theme of creative musical growth. While a select group of young opera singers were by application, brought into a spotlight of “playing” with DiDonato, as she termed the mutual give and take of ideas before a small audience of appreciative listeners, the reverberations of the event reached musicians of all genres.

As pianists, we, too, must be “singers”–never forgetting the vocal line from our earliest exposure to a new composition–through legato (yes “vowels” please, not those interruptive consonants) DiDonato so convincingly extracted this “legato” from her students through the ins and outs of complex Italian lines that had those distinct rolled “r’s,” and other lingual consonants, carrying a dramatic plot forward. How divinely this young crop of vocalists delivered Italian and French texts through seamless, flowing phrases, while inhabiting the character each was portraying. ( This dramatic dimension of the opera form makes it a multi-tiered journey.)

Pianists may not be immersed in the same audible plot advancement in their playing universe, but they must tell a story without words, inviting themselves into an imagination cosmos –exploring colors, textures, varying articulations that are in the service of the composer (re-creating). Like singers, pianists must learn how to “breathe” –a focus that DiDonato emphasized in her classes. Not to underplay harmonic rhythm as it influences the phrase (suspensions, resolutions, modulations etc) pulling back, going forward–threading the line. One vocalist was prodded to sing “harmony” through an enduring sustained note. It made perfect sense as pianist/collaborator, Ken Noda was an orchestra unto himself, weaving through each operatic solo with impeccable balance and polyphony.

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The Back Story: My own exposure to opera and how it influenced my piano teaching.

My mother took me to see the 1953 movie version of Aida (with Sophia Loren being dubbed by Renata Tebaldi) For a very young child, it was almost impossible to sit through a few hours of a confusing plot transmitted in Italian with English subtitles. ( “The story revolves around the character Radames who falls in love with what he thinks is a slave in a country his armies has conquered. The young woman is actually the daughter of the leader he ousted.”) This was far afield from Gilbert and Sullivan light operas to which I had been exposed, or to Milton Cross’s Saturday Afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts that were weekly beamed into our North Bronx apartment. I loved the arias without the dramatic activity on the stage and intricate plots. My mother insisted that at 3 or 4 years old, I sang excerpts from La Boheme and Carmen once the broadcasts ended. For me, the music, apart from the recitatives, was emotionally riveting, especially when rendered by celebrated sopranos of the era. (Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, Renata Tebaldi, et al.)

Murray Perahia, who was my classmate at the NYC High School of Performing Arts was regularly brought as a toddler to the Metropolitan Opera by his father, and his early exposure to well-sculpted phrases must have had a pronounced influence on his artistry. His alliance to the vocal model is so conspicuous in his playing.

While I’ve more often preferred Lieder recitals, or arias programmed apart from the operatic setting, I nonetheless study music with a vocal, singing tone focus that surely sprang from those Milton Cross hosted opera broadcasts of the 1950’s (sponsored by Texaco) But what furthered my own immersion in cantabile, singing tone legato expression (and that very horizontal, seamless line being realized as well in staccato, portato, tenuto and other forms of detached note playing) was finding a vocally centered piano teacher in Lillian Freundlich. During lessons at her townhouse on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive, she sang over my playing, with inflections of her voice prodding me to phrase with give and take densities/contours–so there never could be a flat line through any one dynamic marking.

My very first lesson with Mrs. Freundlich was devoted to rendering long, sustained tones that could not be poked, pushed or squeezed. They had to “breathe” without a grain of tension. Lillian spent a few weeks exposing me to the world of tone production that emanated beyond relaxed arms, wrists and fingers that she encouraged. It was a consciousness that permeated every part of me from head to toe, surely likened to the singers at DiDonato’s masterclasses who were dealing with whole body/soul delivery of operatic works.

Finally, under the heavenly spell of Joyce’s classes, I posted one of my lessons in progress this week where my not so perfect, aging voice (often below pitch) nurtures along phrases through J.S. Bach’s heart-throbbing Sarabande in B minor (French Suite BWV 814)

But first what I most recently recorded, is a beautifully woven tapestry that has many multi-tiered dimensions, though, intrinsically, it’s vocal.

from Arioso7's Blog (Shirley Kirsten)
https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2022/12/18/pianists-can-learn-from-joyce-didonato-and-the-vocal-model/