By Barrymore Laurence Scherer

Through the years, Musical America has paid tribute to classical musicians of virtually every type—composers, conductors, instrumentalists, vocalists, ensembles. While the spotlight has most often shone on soloists, one important area has been overlooked: the accompanist.

Audiences rarely buy tickets to hear an accompanist; concert reviewers have tended to dispatch the accompanist’s work with a curt sentence or two as part of a review. Indeed, the accompanist has long been the unsung hero—if not the unknown soldier—of the concert stage. But let’s face facts: every singer and instrumental soloist knows the inestimable value of a good accompanist. And among American accompanists today none is held in higher esteem than Martin Katz.

Mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, a long-time collaborator, observes that, “Singers are unruly children in music—at least I am. But Marty provides a strict yet very loving, very comforting plane on which to work on music and perform it.”

Evelyn Lear agrees, saying that, “with his unique knowledge of language, diction, and style, and his unerring musical instinct, everything he does is right.”

For soprano Sylvia McNair, “He’s not only incredibly supportive, he’s an incredible pianist: when Martin Katz starts to play, pure magic comes out of that instrument.”

Marilyn Horne has worked with Katz for three decades and declares him to be “the supreme musician. Marty can transpose almost anything at sight; he writes the most superb bel canto ornamentation. As a teacher he has truly altered and enriched the academic curriculum for student accompanists. Add to this his marvelous cutting wit, and you can understand why we have enjoyed 30 incredible years together.”

The litany of other Katz recital collaborators includes most of the great stars of the opera and concert world, among them Kiri TeKanawa, Cecilia Bartoli, and José Carreras. Earlier in his career he also worked with singers from Renata Tebaldi and Cesare Siepi to Thomas Stewart and Régine Crespin. Among his latest partners is the highly acclaimed countertenor David Daniels. When not performing, Katz directs the instruction of accompaniment and chamber music at the University of Michigan, where he was recently named Artur Schnabel Professor of Music.

Yet though Martin Katz seems to have been born to do what he does so well, in fact pure chance played a great part in directing him to his career. A California native, he received piano lessons as part of a well-rounded cultural upbringing. But when the self-described “loner” began playing for his high school choir, he found himself in the midst of a whole pack of new friends. Katz’s youthful work with choral singers awoke in him a love of voices. “Practicing Bach and Chopin preludes in a room is not only lonely, but limiting—you come in contact with no musical colors other than the piano itself. Working with the glee club not only turned me on to the varied colors of vocal ensembles but also to the gregarious nature of making music with other people.” At the same time, Katz was given a recording of La Bohème, which opened another world to him, “of warmth and portamento and Italian expression. And I wanted to be a part of it.”

When the University of Southern California awarded Katz a piano scholarship, he was expected to enter the piano department there. But on impulse he chose to major in accompaniment instead. Katz was placed in the studio of Gwendolyn Koldofsky, who “believed that accompanying was not just some arcane sideline for pianists but an organized discipline in its own right.”

In addition to studio work with Koldofsky, Katz began accompanying students of three other artists who played a major part in his development: Lotte Lehmann, the great Lieder singer and colleague of Richard Strauss, made a deep impression on him through the extraordinary power of her imagination, he says. “She insisted that a singer have every detail of the words and music clearly in his head before taking the first breath to sing.” At the same time Katz had the opportunity to accompany a summer course taught by Pierre Bernac, one of the supreme exponents of French song. “Bernac was also a vivid interpreter,” he recalls, “but in true French style, he insisted that textual precision come first.”

Then there was Jascha Heifetz, whose classes Katz accompanied for two years. “Foremost was his feeling for rubato. He never mentioned the word, and you could never actually write down just how he would keep an instinctual tally of when he was behind in a phrase and when he was ahead. But at the end of four bars everything would be back on the beat.” Heifetz’s playing left Katz with a great distaste for interpretations lacking rubato. “I stress this a lot to my students now, because text-driven phrasing in vocal music is even more inflective than the phrasing in instrumental music—there are stressed words and unstressed words, and a meaningful interpretation must go beyond the limitations of traditional written notation.”

After serving for three years as pianist for the United States Army Chorus in Washington, D.C., Katz moved to New York, where he began his international career in earnest in 1969. Discussing the delicate process of beginning a collaboration, Katz notes that, “I’ve never chosen a soloist. What usually happens is that a singer takes the initiative and books me. We hook up, and if l don’t blow it, I have another client.”

Certainly the relationship between the soloist and accompanist has changed radically from the days when an accompanist was considered only a second-rank pianist. In that light, music journalists have invented euphemistic terms to avoid sounding pejorative. However, Katz finds terms such as “collaborative pianist” or “assisting artist” cumbersome. ‘“Pianist’ is more to the point.”

Nevertheless the collaborative balance between soloist and accompanist is based on their relative experience. Though Katz is widely respected for his profound knowledge and understanding of vocal repertory, he notes that, “people tend to think that accompaniment goes hand-in-hand with coaching. It doesn’t. Renata Tebaldi and Cesare Siepi came to me as veteran artists. They also came from the country where their repertoire originated. So they didn’t need me to tell them what to do.”

Similarly, when Katz began to work with Marilyn Horne, her career was already skyrocketing. “I was the one with less experience. So she was like my big sister, and I was learning as I played repertoire that was new to me, like Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder.”

While Horne is several years Katz’s senior, Frederica von Stade and he are only months apart in age. “Our careers developed at the same time. And though I was grateful to work with her, there was a more informal exchange of ideas between us.” Nowadays Katz finds himself regarded as a “father figure” by his own pupils. “I wasn’t really fond of the idea at first, but now I realize that I’m playing the role that Mrs. Koldofsky played for me.”

“An accompanist’s life may not lead to riches or fame ,” he says, “but it offers something equally precious, for when I work with a singer 1 am working with the most human of all instruments. Thus I feel myself effectively entering that person’s heart and mind, which is a privilege and a real joy.”

Barrymore Laurence Scherer, a music critic for The Wall Street Journal, is the author of Bravo!: A Guide to Opera for the Perplexed, recently published by Dutton. A regular contributor to Gramophone, Opera News, and BBC Music Magazine, he is also a commentator for National Public Radio’s Performance Today.