[ PORTUGUÊS ]
Christophe Desjardins, or the inventive interpreter
Interview conducted by Diana Ferreira in November 2005; translated by Catarina Martins
photography: Pierre Johan Laffitte
7/9
If you have met Morton Feldman, what would you have liked to ask him, or tell him? Speaking to him would change anything on your way of playing...?
Yes, absolutely, because I have so many questions about his music. I know, for instance, that his Americans’ compatriots play his music with much expressivity, lots of vibrato... it’s very exteriorized. And I don’t listen to it like that at all. I listen to it as an inner search, with the least expressivity, where every gesture is calculated so that intentions aren’t expressed but only perceptible. And I’m under the impression that he was a great mystic, concerned with the transcendence problem.
I am curious: on your repertoire what is the percentage of pieces by composers you don’t know personally? You know almost all the composers you play, don’t you?
Alive?
Yes.
That’s an interesting question! Maybe one percent. I don’t know if I can remember even one [alive composer that I don’t know and whose work I play].
You play mainly Contemporary Music. Do you think you could feel fulfilled being part of an orchestra and playing classical repertoire?
Well, I’ve done it.
Yes, but now you have come a long way...
Well, no. Now that wouldn’t be enough for me. An ensemble, a soloist group like the EIC, works on a very different way because of how the programmes are organized. We always play in different positions, next to different instruments. Sometimes we play Solo, others we’re ripieno...
Orchestras (and I’m speaking of what I know, in France) have a problem: they work the same way they did in the XIXth century. They didn’t evolved. Because of the fast changes in society, and the evolution of the work market, people have a lot of different activities during their lives. And I realize that orchestras are completely frozen.
It’s not normal that a violinist enters an orchestra when he’s 24 and he’s asked to do exactly the same 35 or 40 years latter. And nothing has changed in that triangular relation between organizers, the audience and himself. The violinist is someone that has changed immensely! ...And I think this is the real issue. Orchestras are too frozen.
You wrote: “being an interpreter is having the pleasure of encounter”. What does this mean?
Interpreter... “inter” is a part of the word, it means to be between. And so, he is between himself and the audience, between the music and the audience. And it’s an encounter... with young people, students, composers, violists, or any others with whom I can share what I know. With the audience that can be touched by the concert - the classic concert or the ones I like to do, combining different art forms - and by the CD...
I was very impressed by a thought of a great cellist that said that one must be irresponsible to enter the stage. Presenting yourself in a concert hall and playing the Dvorak’s Concert for 2000 or 3000 people... [>]