Boston
Singers' Resource News Bulletin, November
8, 2006
A
collaborative
pianist for international singing stars and rising young musicians in
Boston, Brian Moll knows what makes a good performance great. He offers
his perspectives on what makes a good impression in both performances
and auditions.
As a double major
in German and music at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, Brian Moll intended
on a career as a piano soloist. Although he was in demand even as a
freshman to accompany voice lessons, it wasn’t until his junior
year of study in Hamburg, Germany that he began to give thought to working
as a collaborative pianist. After graduating from Hamilton, he auditioned
and was accepted at the Vienna Hochschule für Musik where he ultimately
received a performance diploma in piano. Again, while he was there,
he was in demand as an accompanist. It was during this second trip to
Germany that he met Martin Katz who was working with Marilyn Horne at
the time. Conversations with the famed accompanist helped bring Moll
to the decision to return to the US and to study with Katz at the University
of Michigan.
That decision, and the ensuing 20 years, has led Brian Moll to a successful
career as a performer, accompanist and lecturer. His work is on both
the international stage, with appearances in Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
Japan, Bulgaria, and France, and the local stage, where he has performed
or worked with such groups as Emmanuel Music, the Handel & Haydn
Chorus and Orchestra, Boston Lyric Opera, and Opera North.
Currently, along with regular recital work with singers such as Barbara
Kilduff, Kevin Deas, Gerald Seminatore, and Barbara Quintiliani, Mr.
Moll is the Music Director of the Opera Studio at the Boston Conservatory
as well as the Chair of the Collaborative Piano Department at Longy
School of Music.
A typical day for Brian Moll starts at the Longy School at 7:15 (to
get a decent parking space) and includes a vocal coaching, private lessons,
a collaborative piano class, a diction class, and a techniques of vocal
coaching class. This all happens between 9:00 and 5:00. Then, from 6:00
until 9:00 he’ll be at the Boston Conservatory where he is in preparation
for a performance of Act II of Mozart’s ‘Marriage of Figaro’,
with Beatrice Jona Affron conducting.
Joe Stroup: You get to hear a lot of pianists with their singers.
What thoughts go through your head as you listen to them?
Brian Moll: The first thing I’m aware of is whether the
pianist is really listening: Are they aware of what’s going on
around them. Balance is something that we’re always challenged
with depending on the piano and on the room and you can’t always
have a sound engineer giving you cues about volume and balance. Also,
I listen to see how someone voices their playing, how do they make the
singer as good as they can, how do they treat that ensemble.
With song rep, I’m sensitive to their chamber skills which are
usually connected to their interest in the text. Are the performers
working organically together? Is the pianist in touch with the text
and word accents? Singers might not realize it but, if the pianist is
merely playing ‘correctly’ but without an awareness of the
text, they’re not being understood as well. If the pianist plays
in a rigid way, not allowing the natural flow of the language to come
out the way the composer has intended, then we don’t understand
the singer as well. It’s up to both of them to insist on that.
My favorite example is the Barber ‘Sure on This Shining Night’
which has constant eighth notes in the accompaniment. If it is just
played all equally, that doesn’t allow the text to work.
JS: What does a collaborative pianist bring to a rehearsal or
performance that differs from a good accompanist?
BM: Collaborative piano isn’t something you do because you
can’t cut it as a ‘regular’ player. I think the basics
of solo playing are a pre-requisite. My ‘theory’ in teaching
is that as a collaborative pianist you first must play as well as you
can. Then, the more musical the player is, the more able to be in the
singers’ world and to be excited by what the singer is doing, the
better. If a pianist doesn’t know or care about what’s going
on in the poetry, even if they’re great pianists, you get the sense
that there’s a missing piece. In opera, a pianist has to be aware
of what the orchestra sounds like and be able to make wise decisions
on how to play it.
JS: When you are working with a musician for the first time,
whether a student or a professional, what are you considering during
rehearsals?
BM: Singers want to hear more feedback than, ‘Oh, that was
lovely, dear’. They all want to get better. I’ve learned that
being too nice or not up-front enough doesn’t help them. But I
try to gauge that; to figure out where they are in their lives or in
the development of their art. If it’s the day before an audition,
that’s not the time to point out certain things. They just need
some general tips and support. But if a singer has a frustration because
things aren’t happening the way they want, be it intonation problems
or a dramatic presentation that’s rigid, I try to be a person out
in the audience while I’m playing and look for the things that
I think an audition panel would pick up on.
In general I find that most singers, but particularly students, haven’t
really dug into what they’re singing about; the whole opera, the
context of an aria. And they don’t understand why knowing that
is going to help them be more committed or impressive when they sing.
As a pianist I’ve played my fair share of pieces that I’ve
had to learn very quickly, especially when I was playing for voice lessons,
and my translations were shaky or it was a poem I hadn’t really
come to terms with. I find that that’s how many younger singers
spend most of their time singing. If there’s anyone who can help
them explain what something’s really about they have a different
take on it, they can sing it better.
I do think some people are sometimes just waiting for magic to happen.
Especially when working with singers who are not in school anymore and
they’re trying to break in somewhere, I don’t feel it’s
my job to tell them ‘don’t do music, there’s no money’;
all that sort of thing. But, I try to sense in the singer what’s
left to do and I don’t want them to be misled. If their languages
aren’t great, or their acting skills are weak, or they consistently
use the same gesture, when I see a pattern of what might turn off a
panel, I try to let them know that and have several reality checks.
JS: You’ve participated, either as a performer or as an
auditor, in many auditions throughout your career, including several
BSR auditions. What aspects of auditions do you find difficult or frustrating
and wish were otherwise?
BM: It can be frustrating as a listener if I feel that the repertory
isn’t the best choice for a singer at that time. An audition’s
not the place to try out an aria for the first time, in front of people.
It’s important for singers to realize when they’re ready to
use an aria and what that aria should be.
So many singers are worried about bringing something that’s a standard.
If it’s not an Art Song audition or a programming audition, then
people want to hear the standard repertoire because it can give them
ideas for other things. Don’t apologize for singing ‘O mio
babbino caro’. If it suits you, then that’s what we want to
hear.
The BSR auditions were so gratifying because they had the option to
present more than one thing or to do a portion of an aria, which doesn’t
often happen. When some of the singers chose not to that, and just did
one aria, I thought that’s not maybe the best aria to go with,
to show them off.
Another thing is the dramatic presentation. Although I understand how
important it is for singers to sing well I think a lot of young singers
don’t realize how much it would help them if they had worked out
what they look like, where their focus points are and, if they are doing
gestures, what those look like. This is especially true if a non-singer,
like a director, is auditioning them. The earlier that becomes part
of the process and planning, the more confident they’ll be and
make a better impression.
JS: Even though your main professional focus is in the academic
world you are a regular auditor at our BSR auditions. How have you benefited
from them?
BM: I look forward to hearing new voices as well as the people
I haven’t heard in a while, to see how they’ve grown. I get
to hear rep I hadn’t heard of or maybe hadn’t thought of in
a while. Also, I act as a referral service sometimes for accompanists
or singers, and I’ve passed on names from those auditions to various
conductors.
JS: You accompany both singers and instrumentalists. Do you see
parallels between the two?
BM: Definitely. The slower music of the instrumental repertory,
such as in a sonata, tends to be more melodic, more lyrical. And, as
with singers, you have the shaping of phrases, knowing how the accompanied
instrument works, and being sensitive to vibrato speed. Some pianists
I know will try to avoid playing for singers because they feel they’re
more at home with the instrumental repertory. But I think that, when
everyone’s doing their job right, it’s all chamber music really.
On the other side of the coin, instrumentalists don’t seem to need
our feedback the way singers do. Perhaps it’s because they aren’t
dealing with languages. They might want to hear about intonation but,
in general, they don’t look for a coaching from me. I try to impress
on singers that, while it’s true that you have to show with your
voice how you want a song to go, still you need to talk about things
with your accompanist.
I try to get singers more excited about the piano part in Art Songs.
I find, to my horror, that sometimes they don’t even look down
at it, they just stare at their part and feel that they’re at the
mercy of whatever pianist they have. I can usually spot a singer who
is or has been an instrumentalist. Just because of their organization,
sometimes their language skills, or their not needing to be babysat.
JS: Are you doing any performing in the near future?
BM: Well, this weekend we’ll (Boston Conservatory) be doing
Act II of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’. I’ll be playing the
orchestral part on piano. One of the fun things about that production
is that it will be conducted by Beatrice Jona Affron who has done work
with Boston Lyric Opera. It’s great to have someone of that caliber
to come in and work with the students.
I’m also working on Britten’s ‘The Rape of Lucrecia’
which we’ll perform in February. Then later in the spring will
be doing Donizetti’s ‘Elixir of Love’. I’m won’t
actually be performing them but I’m working at the rehearsals in
the pit.
JS: Are you working on any other projects?
BM: While I was studying in Austria I was able to hear and get
to know music by Zemlinski and Korngold, in addition to Berg and Schoenberg
and all those. There’s a lot of it out there. But this music was
written during the Nazi era and it was often banned by them. The Nazis
gave a name to it - Entarte Musik, meaning degenerate music - because
the composers were Jewish or they thought that it was too avant garde.
A musicologist friend of mine from Vienna, Thomas Gayda, has worked
on a project for Decca records and has lectured in this country on this
topic. I saw him again last summer and I’ve been thinking of doing
this music. I’d like to get various singers on our faculty to present
it. I’m planning on it for a year from now.
Sometimes in my classes I despair a little because I try to avoid assigning
the songs I know everyone’s heard before or will hear. But then
we’ll get to, say, Hugo Wolf and something that I think is really
standard and most of the students haven’t heard it. So while I’m
not trying to push more German rep when there’s all this standard
rep that’s not learned, I feel like these guys have had and should
have a rebirth of sorts.
JS: What aspects of your work do you enjoy the most, or would
enjoy if you had the opportunity?
BM: If I came back in another life, I might not be an Impresario
exactly but I’d like to facilitate things more. Right now I don’t
seem to have that time during the school year. I’ve had a lot of
dream projects with people that I’ve worked with but then the logistics
of the thing gets in the way. I also would come back as an agent. So
many times, I feel sorry for a singer because I just know, with the
whole ‘show biz’ side of it, they deserve better representation.
This past summer I played in the pit for the Boston MidSummer Opera.
That’s my idea of a dream job. I love doing projects like that
because I don’t have to organize it and I get to play with singers
who are all on top of their game. I could do that all the time. I find
that a lot of those singers, who are very active like that, don’t
do song recitals. I’m finding more that my job is to organize those
things. I wish I had more time for that; getting more recitals going
so people can hear those singers and all the repertoire.
Also, I really like just to play the piano. Others who do what I do
may go more into teaching or conducting so playing is just a means to
an end. I actually like to play. I’m at home on the modern piano.
My biggest goal is to find more time to practice.
A Woman in Her
Bedroom
Boston Conservatory
Fully staged opera scenes featuring Act II of Mozart’s The Marriage
of Figaro.
Beatrice Jona Affron, Conductor
Brian Moll, piano
Seully Hall, 8 The Fenway, Boston
FREE
617-912-9222
http://www.bostonconservatory.edu/performances/calendar.html
Fri Nov 10, 2006 8:00 PM
Sat Nov 11, 2006 8:00 PM
Boston MidSummer Opera:
http://www.bostonmidsummeropera.org/
Martin Katz, collaborative pianist:
http://www.music.umich.edu/faculty_staff/katz.martin.lasso