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How did you approach your collaboration with Claire
Désert?
I found I could function with Claire the same way as I used to
with David Golub. David and I never talked about what we were
doing, and indeed we talked very little about music, because we
allowed the music we were making to take over, to open doors,
to make us think about other options, so that it would be as
spontaneous as possible.
With Claireweworked in that sameway. I’m really fond of football,
and she’s really keen on rugby: we talk about sport, almost
never about what we’re going to do when we play. We listen to
each other, we try out different things. With the experience of
the concert, the interpretation more or less creates itself, as it
were, and that’s how I prefer it, because if you approach every
page of music with a specific intention you paralyse the work,
which needs its share of human experience. And recording fixes
things still more. You can listen to yourself, and you can choose
takes at the editing stage. You acquire a distance, the distance of
the listener. That experience changes the game: it’s like fixing an
interpretation at a precise instant in a certain ideal.