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Like a Surgeon. Although an accompanist should be a partner, he is also, says Ulanowsky, likely to function as "part policeman and part nursemaid." (But, adds Soprano Erika Koth cryptically: "An accompanist is no lover.") Even as incendiary a singer as Maria Callas scrupulously follows the advice of her pianist, Italy's Antonio Tonini, in questions of interpretation. "Tonini pleases me," says she, "because he is an implacable torturer who makes me repeat the same phrase 20 or more times. He has always been for me like an expert surgeon who digs around in one's innards until the cause of the trouble is found and corrected."
In a showdown between partners, the bigger name usually wins. Moore recalls that when he played for Chaliapin, the great Russian bass used to ham up the end of Schumann's Die beiden Grenadiere with a great theatrical gesture, causing the pianist's Nachspiel to be lost in the applause. "There was nothing I could do," says Moore. "Chaliapin was a great big chap more than six feet tall."
England's Harold Craxton, on the other hand, recalls triumphing over a singer who insisted on going up to a top C at the end of the familiar folk song Christ Child Lullaby. When the singer asked Craxton why he was looking at her "so curiously," he replied: "I was just thinking of the Infant Jesus lying in his mother's arms, and I saw him looking up at her and saying: 'Mother, you've been studying the top C, haven't you?' "
Heard But Not Noticed. The U.S., many critics feel, is now producing the best accompanists in the world. "Pianists here are getting better and better," says Rupp. "I'm sure we all play better than Liszt." Nevertheless, most of the accompanists agree that their art is still low-rated in the U.S., while the situation is changing in Europe. English programs often avoid the word "accompanist" entirely, substituting the more palatable word "piano." In Paris the old program phrase "accompanied by" is replaced by the phrase "with the collaboration of."
But even these status signs are not likely to turn the accompanist into a box-office draw. Like it or not, admits Accompanist Craxton, "The greatest moment of an accompanist must always be when the soloist turns to him and says: 'You were wonderful tonight. I didn't know you were there.' "