Partnership in Music

Following the successful 2017 workshop on partnership in music, to honour the legendary Ewa Podleś and Jerzy Marchwiński duo, the Opera Academy is organising another workshop, which is intended to help young singers and pianists understand how to cultivate their collaborative partner relationships, to become more insightful professionals.

Chamber music is considered one of the most intimate forms of musical collaboration. It offers the potential for bonding and developing a musical relationship. Through verbal and non-verbal communication, yet bringing in their musical background, experience and personalities, artists can understand each other’s interpretations and find a joint expression. The way they interact with each other’s voice and impulses creates their shared experience.

However, the role of the pianist in ensembles has for long been reduced to the mere accompanying one. In recent years, much effort has been put to shift the function of the pianist from ‘accompanist’ to ‘collaborative pianist’, or even ‘pianist’, and to establish a new language to include the pianist as part of the ensemble.

To analyse the role of the pianist as a duo partner with singers and the mutual collaboration between the two artists, several aspects are worthwhile underlining, such as:

• What are the roles of both the pianist and the singer in the rehearsal process leading to the final performance?
• How to deepen and enhance expressive skills of the pianist and the singer, both as solo performers and as duo partners?
• How does the arrangement and interpretation process affect the pianist and singer’s joint expression in duo performance?
• How can interactions between the singer and pianist in performance become developed into a shared voice?

In his publication entitled ‘Partnership in Music’, the late Professor Marchwiński pinpointed twelve values, which may serve as a guideline in answering the above questions. This workshop will build on the idea of partnership between the pianist and singer, in order to highlight the intricacies of the duo performance and stress the challenges the artists may encounter in the music-making process.

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