Interview with pianist who accompanied Heifetz

[vlhorowitz]

Hi Everyone,

Here is our recent interview with pianist Martin Katz, who teaches piano at U of Michigan. Katz accompanied Heifetz at USC, and for four decades, has performed alongside some of the greatest singers of our time: Tebaldi, Horne, Carreras, von Stade, etc.

Here, he describes his experiences with the artists, offers his take on the Horowitz/Fischer-Dieskau recording, and what singers have taught him about breathing at the piano.

As always, thank you all for reading

https://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-pianist-martin-katz

[pianoman53]

Very interesting, thank you!

... obviously no one else comments or reads it, cause everyone knows serious musicians can't learn anything from an accompanist -.-
Come on people, read it, and learn something!

[evitaevita]

I've read the whole interview with Mr. Martin Katz and I am fascinated! It was the first time for me to read about him, although I knew his name.

Of course, Mr.Katz has been an important musician who has a lot to tell us because of his experience with notable musicians such as Heifetz, Tebaldi and Carreras. There were a lot of interesting things in this interview. Among them: what he was taught by singers, his opinion on Horowitz's and Fischer-Dieskau's recording (that was almost funny, in a good way!), ... Especially about how singing influences piano playing, that's an issue my teacher has talked to me about very often. Oh! And I didn't know that he had wrote a book about the art of piano accompaniment. I will certainly purchase it sometime as I'm really interested in accompaniment. Although I'm not going to do it professionally, there have been a lot of times that I had to accompany singers or other musicians and my experience with them was unforgettable.

Finally, I'd like to mention that I've read a lot of your interviews with renowned musicians and I have to say that you are doing great work. Thank you!

[/quote]

obviously no one else comments or reads it, cause everyone knows serious musicians can't learn anything from an accompanist -.-

I think that I disagree with this.
First of all, the fact that nobody has responded yet does not necessarily mean that nobody considers an accompanist as a serious musician. For example, personally, I didn't have enough time to read the full interview and, also thought that writing on the thread would be useless. So I waited until I read it.
Furthermore, I don't believe that the word "accompanist" is the one which makes people don't really want to read the interview, but the name of the pianist that unfortunately they may be unfamiliar with.

However, it's true that a several amount of musicians underestimate the work of accompanists. On high-school, I had a teacher who was a great accompanist and an amazing solo pianist as well. At first, she had studied piano performance and then, after taking her diploma and doctoral degree, she studied also accompaniment because she just liked it!
And I couldn't agree more with you that we can learn a lot from this person.