In 1993 Ambronay created the first Baroque Academy to support new generations of performers. Meeting with one of these accompanied artists, Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, co-founder of the ensemble Les Surprises, which has since become one of the great names in early music. It is on display this opening weekend of the Ambronay Festival.
In Ambronay, ancient and baroque music often rhymes with youth. Transmission is in the DNA of the festival. And the European Baroque Academy founded in 1993 has a lot to do with it. In 30 years, she has accompanied 50 young ensembles and 1,250 artists. Great figures of the Baroque, from Jordi Savall to William Christie and Hervé Niquet, have shaped it. And some young performers who attended it then became the stars of today. The singers Patricia Petibon, Karine Deshayes, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, took their first steps there. But also these conductors, formidable pioneers of the baroque repertoire, such as Raphaël Pichon, Sébastien Daucé, Leonardo García Alarcón,
Or the harpsichordist and organist Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, founder with Juliette Guignard of the ensemble Les Surprises, who has since recorded six CDs under the Ambronay label. We met him to talk about his experience at the Baroque Academy, while he is on the bill for the first weekend of the 44th Ambronay Festival for the Passion according to Saint John by Bach.
Franceinfo Culture: We are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Baroque Academy which contributed to expanding the “family” of the Ambronay Festival. Do you feel like a child of Ambronay?
Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas: Actually, yes, completely [rires], but it is not calculated. With Ambronay it started when I participated in the Academy, in 2010, with Hervé Niquet. We had already created the ensemble Les Surprises when we were students at the National Conservatory of Lyon with Juliette Guignard, with whom I direct the ensemble. Musically, this session really shaped me. It was during the years of study, where we build ourselves, I had just participated in the French Youth Orchestra, a great session too but in Ambronay there was something more: the meeting with Hervé Niquet really meant a lot to me. I liked the work he took the time to do with us.
How long did the session at the Academy last?
It’s quite a long rehearsal time, we spent about a fortnight working on the program, as an orchestra. And then you have to add fifteen days of concert, about a month in total. It was on Rameau! Think about it, the name of our ensemble is in reference to Jean-Philippe Rameau and his opera Les Surprises de l’amour, and we already wanted to do a lot of French music!
:quality(50)/2023/09/17/dsc9914-dxo-6506c86ca145e704544168.jpg)
What has the Academy brought you?
When you are a student at a national higher music conservatory (CNSM) or another institution in Europe, it happens that there are orchestra sessions, but ultimately it is quite rare that we are in large groups. And so the Academy brought that, the more orchestral aspect. And then, what also built us, for Les Surprises, were these meetings with musicians, brought by the Academy. For example even today, among those with whom we play Passion Saint John or other orchestral programs, there are many who made the Academy the same year as us. This is the case of the double bassist who has been with us since the beginning, with whom we made the first recording here in Ambronay, Marie-Amélie Clément. I also have a thought for an oboist, Laura Duthuillié, also met at the Academy, who meant a lot to us because she also made the sound of Les Surprises and who died last year. There are others too, who attended the Academy before or after us, that always leads to meetings: with colleagues, a conductor, friends.
Is that the spirit of Ambronay?
Concerning the Academy, yes it is the meeting and experimentation aspect. The spirit of the Academy is linked to the fact that we bring together 40 people between 17 and 30 years old: inevitably, there is a story of emulation and also of the joy of getting together. I remember something very festive, and at the same time very serious in the work, because we like to go far in our musical work.
The Ambronay Academy also has the uniqueness of bringing together young people full of desires and ideas and a very ancient musical heritage…
Yes, it can seem a little surprising when you are in a completely different environment [rires]. Baroque music, it’s true, there are a lot of young people who play it and who really want it. So, it’s not specific to Ambronay, there are similar things elsewhere in Europe, including the European Baroque Orchestra. But it’s true, it’s a very determined youth, who wants to play very specialized music.
:quality(50)/2023/09/17/dsc9862-dxo-6506c7babf634705680365.jpg)
Research in ancient music and the Academy, do they go hand in hand?
I would say that the Academy made me want to experiment in terms of musical work, due to the fact that we had a conductor who took the time to explain his own research. Then, the actual musicological research work on the repertoire comes to me more from my time at the CNSM in Lyon. But it’s true that in Ambronay, on the festival side this time, I always had the impression that there was a desire for that, and there is the taste of a sort of “risk”: we allows itself to program works that have not been performed for centuries and we tell ourselves that the public will come and be happy to discover that.
You are therefore a pioneer, an archaeologist of early French music. And yet, it is not a discovery that you are offering this weekend in Ambronay, but an absolute must of the baroque, a major work by Bach, the “Passion according to Saint John”.
I actually think that despite the archeological work that we are doing with the Surprises, we are not going to stop ourselves from playing works that we love, which are very well known to the general public. And then I have an attachment to Passion according to Saint John especially, from a very young age, more than for other great works of Bach. I listened to it a lot through my parents who also made a theatrical job out of it, because they had a theater company. And so I find it interesting both to go and replay, for example, unknown motets by Henry Desmarest and a work as famous as that.