For the past year I have been dabbling in student instrumental accompanying. While I have read with accomplished friends in the past, and accompanied professionals in concert, I had not previously worked much with students.
My first opportunity came up to play for a violin student at a local young artists’ festival. His repertoire was Prokofiev’s Waltz from Cinderella, the first movement of the Brahms Violin Sonata No. 1, and movements 1 and 2 of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. His mother made contact with me on the 16th of the month; the festival was on the 20th. We had time for one rehearsal, and I had never played any of the pieces. I really wanted the job, so I surveyed an online Facebook group to find out if it was do-able, obtained the music, and got to work.
Here’s how I approached tackling the pieces:
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Listen to a recording with the score. It is vital to get an overall picture of what the music is doing. I tried to find recordings (on YouTube) of both professionals and students playing, as I had no gauge for the ability of the violinist I would be playing with.
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Play through the pieces. Do what you can to get from the beginning to end in one fell swoop.
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Triage. What needs the most work? Identify the rough spots and focus solely on those, writing in fingerings, working out movements and technical difficulties until you can play them with ease.
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Read again, under tempo. Can you get through at a moderate tempo without errors? If not, triage again. If it feels good, move on.
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Learn the instrumentalist’s part. Ideally, you want to be able to play your part and sing/hum/speak the instrumental part. In a last-minute situation, this is not always possible, but you must know as much as you can about the other part. Notice where you play together, where you need to look up for a cue, where you need to listen for the start or end of a phrase. Play the part on the piano by itself. Listen to the recording again, paying attention to what the instrumentalist’s line is doing.
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Play with a recording. We are fortunate to have technology on our side here. There are numerous recordings of standard repertoire available for free on YouTube, and you can even play them at slower speeds! Play the recording on your chosen electronic device, with or without headphones or with one earbud in, and play the piano along with it. Where do you fall out of sync? Are there potential trouble spots that you may need to address proactively in rehearsal?
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Listen to as many different recordings as you can find, as many times as you can. Your goal is to know the piece as fully as you can – the form, phrasing, where the instruments dance together and where one shines and the other supports, etc. Every time you take a walk, get in the car, go to the gym, prep a meal…every chance you get, put on a recording.
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Take notes and record your rehearsal with the instrumentalist. Make as many notes as you can in the music so that you can return later in private practice and work through any trouble spots you have personally or that were messy in collaboration. Record the rehearsal so you can go back and listen and identify any other problems you may not have been aware of “live.”
If you are already proficient at the piano and have good sightreading skills and technique, these steps should help you learn a new collaborative piece in a short amount of time. I was fortunate to have the Mendelssohn drop off in this particular scenario and I spent the bulk of my time learning and polishing the Brahms. The Prokofiev was much easier to learn and put together. That event led to more wonderful collaborations with that particular student, and to an ongoing professional relationship with his teacher and other students in the violin studio. I would not have benefitted from those interactions if I hadn’t first took a risk in accepting a last-minute accompanying request.
It's worth the risk! Challenge yourself, and the next time an opportunity presents itself for you to accompany a singer or instrumentalist in a new situation, take it! Hopefully you will enjoy more lead time than I did, but if not, take courage and commit to focused practice and intentional listening, and see where the music takes you.
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