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20 JS. BACH_SIX SONATAS FOR VIOLINAND PIANO BWV1014-1019
What were your feelings when you read through these sonatas?
N.D.:
How can such controlled music provoke so much emotion? Bach’s ‘fragility’
touches me. It’s a miracle of sensitive, expressive effects, which explode in every
phrase. So I wanted to convey to listeners what I felt inmy heart. It’s also true that,
with the onset of maturity, we tend to go to the essence of the musical message,
to purify our playing, in the good sense of the word. In Bach, phrasing is up to the
performer.And the few raremarkings are not, inmy opinion, to be taken as dogma.
I have a very free relationship with what’s marked in the score. Is it presumptuous
to say that this is the performer’s share in the creative act?
Your interpretation has been nourished by all your other repertories, in
particular the contemporary music you play, or even the jazz you perform
regularly . . .
N.D.:
To finish answering your question about how to approach this repertory, it’s
quite true that it is this sum of all the works we have learnt that one day makes us
decide to record Bach. I would like all my concerts to openwith a piece by Bach, the
ABC of music.