“With salt and pepper” 
Jordi Savall in conversation

Jordi Savall is a viol player and a conductor who has founded multiple world-class ensembles and is now an institution in the field of historically informed performance practice. This season has seen him appearing for the first time at the helm of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and he now returns with Le Concert des Nations to perform the Mozart Requiem. In the course of this interview he speaks about his debut and explains what makes the Requiem unique for him, while at the same time painting a very personal portrait of Mozart as a human being.

Since 2011 you and your ensembles have been regularly invited to appear at the Philharmonie, but this season has been special: as part of a tribute to your work you have come to Berlin on multiple occasions, including your debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in a programme of music by Rameau, Gluck and Mozart. How would you describe your debut?

It was wonderful! I was initially a little sceptical because I was unsure if a Baroque piece like the Suite from Rameau’s opera Naïs could be convincingly performed on modern instruments, so I was all the more surprised to discover how quickly the musicians grasped the character of this music and how much pleasure they derived from venturing into Baroque repertoire and from performing the various ornamentation techniques with such stylistic assurance. It is more difficult, of course, to achieve the same degree of flexibility that Baroque music demands when using modern bows and steel strings, but they rose to the challenge quite masterfully: they were virtuosic and committed, and they played this music with obvious joy.

You appear above all with ensembles that are committed to historically informed performance practice. What did you find that was different when conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker? What aspects did you have to work on in particular?

Articulation comes first for me. It’s the same with speaking: if the consonants aren’t properly articulated, you can’t understand what the other person is saying. It’s not just about playing forte and piano – there are so many other articulation markings above the notes: staccato dots, accents and other articulation marks. They all have to be interpreted differently. There’s a simple piano and there’s also a piano played with some pressure. Here it is a question of how the bow makes contact with the string and how the pressure is produced – and how that pressure is then released. The music then becomes clearer and more dynamic and the contrasts emerge more effectively. The players really blossomed during our rehearsals. They looked at each other, laughing and enjoying themselves – they really played with salt and pepper.

From the cello to the viola da gamba

You trained as a cellist and on completing your studies it was the viol that became your instrument of choice. And with it you also discovered a whole new world of early music. What did you find so fascinating about the viol and about early music?

Yes, I was classically trained on the cello and I naturally played the cello’s traditional repertoire. It was more or less by chance that I stumbled upon the music written for the viol, but I was immediately fascinated by it. To begin with, I played these pieces on the cello, but in 1964 I finally acquired my first viol and taught myself to play it. It was clear to me that practically none of this music had been edited and published, so I visited the libraries in Paris and London, where I discovered works from the golden age of the viol. I was overwhelmed by what I found here; I thought, “My God, what incredibly beautiful music!” Back then virtually no one knew this music. I ordered microfilms of the original manuscripts and used these to prepare my own editions of this material.

You have founded three early music ensembles that have been hugely successful on the international scene: Hespèrion XX (now Hespèrion XXI), La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations. Why didn’t you stop at just one ensemble? Why create three?

The history of music is very long and very varied. We perform music from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. This broad stylistic range can’t be adequately realised by any single ensemble. On completing my studies I started to give concerts with some very fine musicians. One day I was approached by a record company which wanted to record our entire programme at once. So we needed a name: Hespèrion XX combines the past and the present. Later we wanted to perform vocal music at well, and so I decided to form a vocal ensemble, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, with male and female singers from different countries. And then I needed a larger orchestra to perform French operas, and that’s how Le Concert des Nations came into being.

It is Le Concert des Nations that you are bringing with you to your final concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker this season. What makes this ensemble so special?

This orchestra is really very special. Since 2019 it has been made up in equal parts of young musicians and seasoned professionals. The younger members bring energy, curiosity, imagination, spontaneity and passion to the job, while the more established players ensure security, a cultivated sound and stability. The combination is positively electrifying. The European Union supports us each year to the tune of 600,000 euros. That might sound like a lot, but it covers only 40 per cent of our project budget. I have to raise the remaining 60 percent each year.

Focus on Mozart

One of your concerts’ main focuses this season is Mozart. For your debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker you chose his “Jupiter” Symphony. In the case of your concert with Le Concert des Nations we have the Clarinet Concerto and the Requiem. This last work has a very special significance for you personally. Can you elaborate?

It is because of this work that I became a musician. As a thirteen-year-old I attended a rehearsal of the Requiem, and suddenly I had tears rolling down my cheeks. I told myself: “If music can create emotions like this, then I want to make music too.” And so I decided to study the cello.

You know the whole stylistic range of European music from its very beginnings. There are settings of the Requiem from every period. What makes Mozart’s setting so special for you?

When Mozart wrote his Requiem, he was at the very pinnacle of his powers – but at the same time he was in a situation of existential crisis. He was gravely ill, plagued by debts, he had pawned his furniture and he was freezing in his apartment. He was leading a bitterly hard life at the time. And I think that this led him to write a work that drew on the very depths of his being. That inevitably moves us whenever we perform and hear this music. One is aware of a metaphysical dimension in this work and of a spirit – a revolutionary spirit – that rises up in revolt at all the forces that destroyed his life.

To what extent has your engagement with early music coloured your view of Mozart’s music?

We know the Renaissance, the seventeenth century, the works of Lully, Rameau, Handel, Bach and Gluck. With this “baggage”, this rich store of experience that was still present during the Viennese Classical period, we approach Mozart. We try to play his music in the way that it may have sounded in his own day. Anyone approaching Mozart from the opposite direction – from the music of Strauss, Mahler and Stravinsky – brings a different kind of “baggage” with them. But the decisive factor is rather different: this music must be allowed to live. It’s the same as it is between human beings: we can love someone, but if we don’t leave them enough space to develop, true love is impossible. It’s exactly the same with music.

Why are you conducting the Requiem and the Clarinet Concerto as part of the same programme? It’s hard to think of a greater contrast.

Yes, but it’s a contrast that makes ideal sense. Like the Requiem, the Clarinet Concerto is one of Mozart’s last works. And yet what we hear in it is pure joy, the pleasure in amusing others and this profound yearning for beauty. The concerto is a real jewel and as such the perfect counterweight to the Requiem.

In Mozart’s time the clarinet was still a relatively modern instrument. What was it that constituted its modernity? Why was it so fashionable just then?

Because it represents the age that produced it: the lightness and the virtuosity of the Rococo and Classical periods. It’s not a dramatic instrument in the way that the cello is, for example. It speaks with a tone that is never harsh.

You have long taken an interest in Mozart. What pointers does his music contain that tell us about Mozart as a human being?

He must have been an extraordinary person, a combination of child and brilliant artist. His soul was as pure as a child’s. He could imagine some quite bizarre things – his letters and his music attest to this. He could be provocative but he also had respect for everything. He also fought for his own freedom; he fought to be free from the Church and from a social system in which musicians like himself were no better than servants.