LDV118

At the start of this interview, we spoke of how moved you were when you discovered Death in Venice . I’d like us to conclude with this film, which occupies a key place in your cinematic pantheon. Yes, it does. This film and certain sequences in particular – I’m thinking of the scene when the woman sings Lullaby from Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death , at the moment when Gustav von Aschenbach is about to die and he contemplates the beauty and indeed the life that are ebbing away from him – show the extraordinary knowledge Visconti possessed of every form of artistic expression. On the big screen, they merge in a single gesture. And then, of course, there’s the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. I chose the transcription, or perhaps I should say the adaptation by Alexandre Tharaud, such a pure artist, whom I greatly admire and whom I’d like to thank for having allowed me to record his score. I’ve tried to convey as well as I can the symphonic dimension of this piece which diffracts time. I must confess that, every time I play it, I feel the divine density of the images weighing on my fingers. And in those moments I relive the ‘confusion of feelings’ evoked by Stefan Zweig’s famous novella of the same name. 31 JEAN-MARC LUISADA