The Hammock Papers: Pursue.

07 July 2020

Pursue.

Peter Bloemendaal interviews Pieter Jan Leusink on the occasion of his recording of the complete Bach sacred cantatas ...

PB: How would you characterize yourself as a conductor?

PJL: In any case, I am not someone who bothers about the question how Bach would have performed his music exactly. To me it feels rather derogatory towards Bach when people pretend to know how his music must have sounded. No one knows. There is no historic proof. What I myself think essential is imagination. I have brought in some ingredients I share with Bach: a boys’ choir, a church that resembles Thomaskirche, period instruments and musicians who are able to perform well on them. I know that Bach knew the problems of a boys’ choir: trebles mutating at a very inconvenient moment, trebles with various voice troubles. I am a no nonsense conductor. I do not want to spend hours on details. Like the famous Austrian soccer coach Ernst Happel used to say in his German Dutch to his players when they wanted to discuss details: “Kein Gelul! Fussball spielen!” ( “Cut the crap! Let’s play ball!”), my motto is: “Don’t fuss about trifles! Let’s make music!” That’s what our audience wants to hear and I want to please the audience. Do some people think I’m authoritarian? You tell me. But really, no, I don’t think I am. What I always try to achieve is to get the best out of every singer and musician. I am dependent of my performers. Each individual has to pursue his personal best, but you cannot make music with 24 soloists.

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Pieter Jan Leusink enthusiastically conducts The Bach Orchestra of the Netherlands, featuring Olga Zinovieva, in a performance of Mozart "Der Liebe himmlisches Gefühl", K. 119 (382h) ...

Pieter Jan Leusink is my new conducting hero.

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MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL