Philippe Pierlot

Álvaro Teixeira: We just heard you playing and conducting very old works...

Philippe Pierlot: I played a repertoire around Henri Purcell, certainly among the most important baroque composers. He belongs to a very rich period in England, particularly the Elizabethan period, and in this period in England there are an absolutely impressive number of composers of an excellent level. The most well known are Bird, who is not a very well known composer but, in my understanding is one of the great composers in the history of music, almost on the level of someone like Bach, on the level of science and depth of composition. Bird we didn't play in this concert...

(laughs)

PP Purcell is the heir of this English polyphonic tradition, very personal, in the sense of these composers who possess a real identity, linked, perhaps, to the insularity of the English, and voila, the pieces that we play today, particularly the Purcell fantasy are at the same time the apogee and the swan song of this tradition because, after Purcell, this tradition of writing fantasies for string ensembles, is going to end, therefore being the apotheosis and the end of this rich school.

AST But these works sound somewhat ecstatic, don't you think?

PP So...

AST You can't feel the modulations...

PP I don't share your opinion at all...

(laughs)

PP I think exactly the opposite...

(laughs)

PP Within baroque music, and particularly in fantasies, Purcell is one of the most audacious composers, precisely at the level of harmony. Purcell was very influenced by Italian music. Well... the music we play in this concert, it is true, comes from another tradition. From the tradition of very melancholic music. It's true that it's not an extroverted music. It's totally the opposite of that. It's a very interior music. In Purcell's work there is another kind of production more influenced by the Italian school because Purcell liked Italian composers very much, but he appreciated them not for their exuberant, Mediterranean aspect, let's say, but, on the contrary, for the depth of their compositions. And at that time in Italy there were composers who were exactly doing research in order to find richer and more expressive harmonies. We are on the opposite side of very well-known figures like Vivaldi who is more exuberant and more...

AST And which are these Italian composers you are referring to?

PP In instrumental music a composer who surely influenced Purcell was Vitali. Coreli comes later but there are in the school of Rome people like Carissimi, Cavalli, there is also a lesser known composer called Maratolli. These are very audacious composers who did a lot of research. Later on, in the eighteenth century, there is the birth of classicism that will take hold with the well-known forms like the concerto and the sonata.

AST Very good. In this music festival you bring us exclusively repertoire from England, don't you?

PP Yes, in fact the project of La Foule Journé, this year's Music Festival, was around England. When they contacted us, this was the theme that was planned, and then over time it evolved into the Harmony of Nations, but we had already started to prepare some works. So we are also going to do a program with Núria Rial with Haendel. It's also true that in our repertoire we always have a lot of German music like Bach and his ancestors... But I think that the theme of English music is a very good and very interesting theme because this music is among the richest but is perhaps the least known and, it must be said, the least accessible to the public because, as you rightly pointed out, there is a lot of melancholy and ecstaticism in this music. It's not music that makes you want to sway while listening to it. But it has a richness that is very inner and that requires a certain initiation to be able to appreciate all its excellence.

AST In a certain way it is a kind of modern day Harnoncourt...

(laughs)

AST Do you plan to "evolve" to classicism, or not?

PP In two weeks we leave for Japan, and there we will play Haydn and Mozart...

AST Ha!

PP But that's the exception for us...

AST Ho...

PP Well... I play the viola de gamba, so my repertoire is more or less the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century too... all this period when the viola de gamba had a great projection and a lot of repertoire was written for this instrument. But I also play the bariton which is a less known instrument, similar to the viola de gamba, but with sympathetic strings, and for which Haydn wrote a lot. And it is true that I feel very close to Haydn's music. On the other hand, for the first time I conducted Mozart's Exultate recently.

AST This is a well known path... musicians who start with very old music, move to the baroque and shortly after to the classical. Not to mention those who "jump" to the Romantic... Harnoncourt ended up conducting Bruckner...

PP I don't think that will be my case. You never know how life will evolve... It's true that if I was offered to direct a Mozart opera I would hardly refuse. It's a music that I feel close to... But my main interest, and I think it will remain so for a long time to come, is the seventeenth century. I don't think I'm going to move away from that repertoire. I think that those who evolve towards classicism and romanticism is because, as orchestra conductors, classicism and romanticism is music that gives more satisfaction. I can understand that those who only conduct are drawn to this repertoire. The music of Vivaldi, for example, is an area where an orchestra leader can add little after the works are worked on in rehearsals. One could say that orchestra can play alone. Nevertheless, when I am there in front of the musicians, I can induce certain inflections at the moment of the concert.

AST But you play while directing the ensemble at the same time.

PP That depends on the works and the size of the group. When I work with a choir or an orchestra with soloists, it is necessary to be in the front to coordinate the whole ensemble and to be the one who maintains the interpretative consistency. When there is no leader, it can be interesting because it allows the musicians more freedom of initiative and allows for different versions. But having a leader who coordinates the whole ensemble can also be important.

AST Finally, it is the interpretation of the conductor that interests us... as in classicism and romanticism... I can't imagine an orchestra playing Mahler's symphonies without a real conductor... it is true that the Berlin Philharmonic, after Karajan's death, did it with Beethoven... in the Karajan way... It didn't do it with Mahler. Of course. But what we want is the version, the re-interpretation, of such and such a conductor. If it's really a conductor... Because if he's an idiot orchestra leader, we might as well let the orchestra play alone... In fact, the Berlin Philharmonic, after Karajan, always played the same, and the conductors moved their arms to accompany it. Only real directors, great artists with charisma, could make it play as they wished. And it wasn't easy...

PP Yes, it is often said that the Berlin Philharmonic could play Beethoven, without a conductor, in the manner of Furtwängler or Karajan... But well... the truth is that when Furtwangler or Karajan were there it was surely different...

AST Yeah...

PP I am first of all an instrumentalist. When I direct it's because it's really necessary to go there. Also because I want to give my vision of the work. There is an opera by Marin Marais that saw the day thanks to my initiative. After the seventeenth century it had not been performed again. I was the one who rewrote it. It's mostly these kinds of things that interest me as a chief of staff...

AST You are also a musicologist...

PP Since always one of the aspects that attracts me in this music is the discovery aspect. Hence the name of our group Ricercar. It's the state of mind of always being in research, either of the repertoire or the way of interpreting it. It's exciting because we realize that there is an impressive amount of works yet to be discovered, sometimes major works by composers to be rediscovered. Even at the level of the interpretation of better known works, and we are currently working on some of Bach's creations, there is still a lot to research, for example, at the level of the management of instrumental and vocal forces, when using a large church organ, for example... we have just made a recording using a large organ, not a positive organ as is usually done in concerts and also on records, we decided to make this recording with a real organ, a large instrument, as Bach did in his time. This seems like a detail, but it is this kind of thing that can greatly influence an interpretation. This was just an example to explain that in the music of the past, from whose roots we are already very far away, there are still many practices and habits to be rediscovered and this is the richest and most exciting aspect for those who work and interpret this kind of music.

AST A one minute answer to finish: what do you think about contemporary music production?

PP I evolved in a musical environment where contemporary music was very important. I was born in Liege in Belgium, where the director of the conservatory at the time I attended it was Henri Pousseur...

AST And Boesmans...

PP Exactly. Philippe Boesmans was born in my town. But Pousseur, who is not a very well-known figure as a composer, was part of the circle of Stockausen, Bério, Cage and at the conservatory when I did my studies I listened to the interpretation of all the works of all these composers who regularly came to the conservatory to talk about them and guide their creation. It was a music that I grew up on and our group very regularly commissions works from young composers to be performed on our old instruments.

AST Philippe Pierlot: thank you very much for this dense and rich conversation. I'll be there to listen to you at the upcoming concerts.