Emmanuelle Haïm is a harpsichordist and conductor, one of the few conductors in the world to conduct baroque music. She is the first woman to have directed the Chicago lyric Opera company, in 2007. In 2000, she created and directed the Concert d’Astrée ensemble and we are celebrating together the 20th anniversary of this creation with the release of the album : A new Baroque party. The concert of Astrée.
franceinfo: This set really allowed you to explore the Baroque world, to make it evolve and to evolve at the same time.
Emmanuelle Haim: Yes, completely. It’s true that there are works that I’m taking up now and that we did at the very beginning of the Concert d’Astrée. I particularly think of Dido and Aeneas by Purcell because we’re going to the Grand Théâtre du Luxembourg in a few days to perform it again, this time in a rather special stage version and it’s one of the first records we recorded. Finally, it is as if it were a new work that you are looking at almost for the first time. It makes you evolve. In a way, every project is a challenge.
You went to understand what was happening, on the spot, in Greece and you realized that in the theaters, people were treated there. There is also a work of History, of recognition, a work of writing always in the bottom line?
Yes. And at the same time, all that is mysterious. I remember as a child, but really young, I knew that music was the only thing I really cared about. I continue to be, yes, passionately interested in all the subjects it allows me to explore. I also meet lots of people who are in a similar search, for this mysterious thing that we try to approach, which is probably also the beautiful that we cannot qualify or that touches you. Why are we affected? What makes us touch others? And how do we communicate with people? I think that’s what matters to me.
You started with the piano and then you dropped it because you were too solitary to put the harpsichord at the heart of your work, which is at the heart of the orchestra. There was already a job, a desire to have a family connection through music.
Personally, I found the first times I played the harpsichord in the orchestra very extraordinary. I just found it magical to have the musicality of everyone coming to you, like that, in waves. It is striking, truly. There, I said to myself that’s what I want, to be really immersed in sound, in the works of the interior, with the others. So management followed suit.
There was a musicality all the same at home, as a child.
I think culture has this role, not to close borders, but to open them because it’s an extraordinary means of communication.
Emmanuelle Haimat franceinfo
Yes. My mother was an amateur musician, but music was very important in her family. She very naturally put us, all the children, to music, as we put children to reading, without thinking about it.
In my father’s family, who was from Istanbul, with varied origins, there too, music was poetic, important and we referred to it. In music, we also have this chance to mix and I find that it is an opening, a necessity to tell the truth.
So you studied musical writing and harmony very early on. Are you in harmony with yourself with this role of conductor, knowing that you are one of the few conductors in the world to conduct baroque music?
Being in harmony with yourself is the work of a lifetime. So, I hope to get there one day.
It’s funny because you really wanted to sing at the beginning.
I wanted to do lots of things. I wanted to be a dancer. My back was completely twisted with scoliosis so I was told after a while: “No, that’s not possible“. I found that dance brought together music, rhythm and movement, I thought that was fantastic. I had a voice, quite broken, but I loved so much the fact that a singer had the words and the I do a lot of projects with dancers, with singers and with musicians.
Simon Rattle, now Sir Simon Rattle, is the conductor who really made you want to become one too. Is it a click?
It is such a special passage to pass this stage, to assume the fact of saying: “Yes, I want to lead“that the consent of another chief or of several other chiefs is absolutely fundamental. Someone who says to you: “But yes, that’s what you have to do“.
Which conductor are you then?
To be a conductor, you must be in harmony with yourself, to exercise it as closely as possible to who you are.
Emmanuelle Haimat franceinfo
I don’t think it’s a role that needs to be fixed in the way it’s exercised. I think he must look like you.
Finally, are you proud of this course?
Yeah, I have to say I’m proud, but the thing I’m pretty happy about is that my daughter is proud of it. She is 16 years old. From time to time, we have somewhat philosophical discussions about all that and that makes me happy.