Ton Koopman, patron of the Montreal Bach Festival 2007 Ton Koopman, founder of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir as well as world-renowned conductor, harpsichordist, organist, and a leading figure in the authentic performance movement.

Interviewed by Eric Friesen, CBC Radio 2, Studio Sparks

Eric Friesen: I would like to begin with the broadest question, which has to do with Bach's relevance today. I mean, I love his music, I've listened to it all my life but if I step away from my own familiarity with it I just have to marvel at Bach's endurance. Why is it that this man's music is still at the heart of Western music today?

Ton Koopman: I think Bach is an enormous genius. He is a person who is able to compose in a way that mind and emotion are in a fantastic balance. „Bach the Architect" is my favorite expression for Bach, because he can touch the heart with even one harmony. As well, you can just look at his music surprised saying, 'Oh my God, how is it possible that you can write in counterpoint like that, that you have the craftsmanship that Bach has, which is enormous, and still be able to reach the heart.' And I think few people can do both. One can maybe write very beautiful melodies but the counterpoint and the depth of the thoughts are not what you find in Bach. With Bach it is really this combination which is fantastic for me.

EF: Now, everything changes around us all the time and at ever increasing speed but Bach continues to speak to us. Do you think it is the same essential message or communication as it was 100 years ago or is it different?

TK: I think interpretation of course was very different 100 years ago, and the message of the music had a different package. I think of the emotional power and maybe at some point the religious power, because I am certain for some of the musicians in the early twentieth century, the religious power was one of the main reasons they liked Bach. That is maybe different nowadays. But I would say, for example Aus Liebe from the St Matthew Passion and the Agnus Dei from the B-minor Mass, I think everybody was under the spell of the music for more than 100 years because it is just like a painting of Leonardo Da Vinci or Rembrandt. It is something that goes higher than just taste and time.

EF: As you suggested, Bach performance practice has changed a lot over the years. You have been at the heart of it for at least forty years. Why were you and why are you still so intent on authenticity in performing Bach's music?

TK: Because I think when you build a house, when you do restoration on a house you use the right tools. And I think the historical instruments are the right tools to perform music from the past. The modern flute, the modern oboe, however beautiful they are, are still strange instruments for Bach. Bach had completely different instruments in mind and I think a composer writes for the instruments he knows. I am not a person who says, 'You are not allowed to play Bach on a piano,' because I feel I should not be a policeman for somebody else. But I still think a piano is a different instrument than what Bach had in mind when he composed music for the keyboard. He composed music for the harpsichord because that was his instrument and though he knew a little about the fortepiano, the early piano at that time, he was too old-fashioned to understand this, to enjoy it. And so, if you want to prove, then, that Bach, 'of course, if he had known the piano, he would have written for it,' then I would say, of course, if he had known the piano he would have written differently for it.
But with having in mind the right tools to build, to create, you do something that makes the music come alive. And when Harnoncourt and Leonhardt started in the Fifties to use historic instruments, suddenly the music felt at home; and fortunately in our days more and more modern orchestras, modern symphony orchestras, are going to perform Mozart, Bach, and Haydn with their instruments but with a different aesthetic.
I think it is an important thing in our time that it is possible to make a bridge between the two things. But still, in a modern orchestra, however well it plays and however good the musicians, the instruments have to be forced to do the things Baroque music wants. And long ago when I convinced my friends to go from modern instruments to Baroque instruments, how difficult the step was to give up your technique and your abilities and start all over again and in the beginning the result is not great, but when it starts to work and when you come under the spell of the sound quality, the sound world, then suddenly many things are much more logical, much more easy to do than with modern instruments.
I worked with the Boston Symphony Orchestra a few times, and once when some of the musicians there, because they had seen some original bows lying around, asked, 'May we try them,' and I said 'Of course.' Then they suddenly discovered what you could do with those historical bows. They just give an articulation that can never be imitated on modern Tourte bows. And the same goes for a Baroque violin with gut strings, the same with a Baroque oboe, the instrument is your teacher as well, it tells you something, and to imitate it on a modern instrument, certainly if you have good guidance with that, you can go quite far but the next step is inevitably to go to Baroque instruments.

EF: You said earlier, that you don't want to be a policeman for those who want to play it on modern piano and we have great examples in our time like Glenn Gould, Angela Hewitt and the young Martin Stadtfeld. Do you listen to those who play in such a radically different way; is there something we can learn from them, do you think?

TK: Angela Hewitt... I even once played in concert with her, and I think she is very musical. And sometimes as well, she and other people ask what we can do on the harpsichord. I think you cannot imitate the harpsichord on the piano and you should not try; leave the harpsichord and leave the piano as different instruments and then you can say my preference is this and their preference is the other.
For me the harpsichord is the most perfect instrument at the end of the eighteenth century and the fortepiano is the newcomer. My wife is playing fortepiano and she likes the original Stein instrument, and I have to say, I have to confess, that it is a beautiful instrument and I like to hear it when she plays it. The modern Steinway is still further away from the eighteenth century, of course, because it is made to get a big volume, because the concert halls of course are much bigger than they were in the time of Bach and the nineteenth century even. And so you make a louder and louder sound to be heard.
We know from Beethoven that he played as loud as possible on the fortepiano, and he sometimes killed the instrument. And so you see, still, that the fortepiano played even with Baroque instruments is more piano than forte. And if I play the C.P.E. Bach Concerto for fortepiano and harpsichord, I win; the harpsichord is louder than the fortepiano. So one of the first things they did was to try to make the fortepiano louder and louder to be able to be heard in a concerto of Mozart and later of course with Beethoven. It's an understandable thing and then you go on and on and improve and you change and then at some point you get to a completely different sound. And there are extremely musical people who play Bach on the piano and I say to my harpsichord students, 'Listen, if you complain about somebody playing Bach on the piano, do it better!' So, I am not categorically saying you shouldn't do it.
I see some of the modern pianists who play Bach on the piano; they really do it with great esteem for Bach, falling under the spell of his music, saying, 'I am sorry, I do not play the harpsichord, if I play it on the harpsichord it will be not well played because it is not my instrument. I have to do it on my instrument,' and then I say, OK, enjoy it.

EF: So you play Bach on his instruments but yet there is so much more room for interpretation in Bach, in ornamentation, in tempo, dynamics and so on, so my question is I guess to paraphrase Wanda Landowska, do you play Bach your way or his way?

TK: That is always the central issue. I am a bit more careful than Wanda Landowska, because she was certain that she played it his way and if you hear her recordings now, then you say we have a different idea about „his way" and so maybe the generation after me will have a different idea again. Maybe there is an interpretation that is lined up with the time when you live. In our time, because of pop music, rhythm is very important. So, certainly our feeling for rhythm makes that we play maybe a more rhythmical Bach than at the time of Landowska. Who is right? Maybe there is not one truth. If a great composer like Bach is giving us this music and we all try to study to discover the manner in which he liked it, there is bound to be many different ideas about it. It is like restoring an old painting: when we restore a Rembrandt now or 50 years ago, maybe the result is different. But if the main aim is that we try to understand him and we do it with the greatest esteem for someone who is bigger than us then I think hopefully we apologize when we come arrive in heaven and he is there saying, 'My way was Landowska and not Koopman.'

EF: The Montreal Bach Festival happens in December this year and you have agreed to be the patron. Why did you say yes, when the Bach-Académie de Montreal asked you?

TK: In the first place I have very nice memories of Montreal, beautiful city with a beautiful old city and very lovely musicians. I have friends there and I have good memories of doing concerts there, and it has been a long time since I have been there. And when this question from the Bach-Académie de Montreal came, ah, fantastic: they have, I thought, the great McGill University, such an intensive music life, with the Lagacés, Bruce Haynes being there, who a long time ago played in my orchestra when he was still living in Amsterdam.
It's very nice to be involved with this city that has a lot of history already from the sixteenth, and seventeenth century particularly. So I said, of course, with pleasure, and they asked me also to join them for the next Festival and I am looking forward to being there.
And when I look at the program this year I see a lot of friends from Europe I know, Marcel Ponselee and his group, Il Gardellino. And if I think of Kent Nagano, I often work with his now ex-orchestra in Berlin, the Deutsche Symphonieorchester Berlin, and it was he who brought me there to do Haydn and we had a good time and I still have good times with them. Maybe I will see him this year when I am in Munich and have dinner with him and chat about music. He is a great musician. So I am honoured to be asked to do this and I look very much forward to see Montreal and I wish the Bach Festival there a very long life. I know there is an enormous interest in North America in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and it's good to see the old and the new coming together.

EF: Thank you very much, it was great to talk to you. We look forward to seeing you here when you come in 2009.