2024-05-12 18:45:40
Ton Koopman comes from a country where early music was exceptionally successful and whose institutions in this field are still among the most sought after. The 79-year-old Dutch conductor, harpsichordist, collector of old prints and Bach specialist will perform his cantatas on June 2 in the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum.
Visitors to the Prague Spring Festival will have the opportunity to experience one of the pioneers of historically informed interpretation with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir he founded.
At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, there was an increased interest in early music performed on historical instruments in both Europe and England. It was, without exaggeration, a revolution in the understanding of interpretation, its rules and aesthetics. Generations of musicians, enchanted by the “imperfect” sound of old instruments, looked for the key to the correct performance of old works in period treatises, letters and sheet music.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Vienna, Trevor Pinnock, Christopher Hogwood, Roger Norrington or John Eliot Gardiner in Great Britain, Jordi Savall in Spain or Philippe Herreweghe in Belgium, who will also come to this year’s Prague Spring, opened new horizons. The ears of thousands of listeners have become accustomed to a different way of perceiving sound.
Ton Koopman, equipped with a classical education, studied organ and harpsichord under the great Gustav Leonhardt. The native of the city of Zwolle remembers that time fondly. “Back then we were trying to find something and we didn’t really know what. Something like the Philosopher’s Stone. We were looking in old literature for references to what is the correct vibrato, articulation, tuning, trills and the like. Today’s students often think they already know everything, because information is available. But the older we get, the more we realize there’s still a lot we don’t know,” he says.
A lifelong curiosity led Koopman to the sources, especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. As a harpsichordist and organist, he studied and recorded his work in its entirety. Because of his small stature, he cannot reach the pedals of the organ with his heels, so he plays only with the tips of his feet, which corresponds to baroque practice.
No one would guess that Tona Koopman is 80 years old. | Photo: Eddy Posthuma de Boer
He strengthened his relationship with the author by working in the management of the Leipzig Bach archive. Koopman has a strong connection to the place where the great composer worked as a cantor between 1723 and 1750.
He visited it for the first time during the GDR and gave his first masterclass here at a time when the regime was crumbling and thousands of people were demonstrating outside. In the church of St. Tomáš, Bach’s final resting place, he also gave many concerts with his ensemble.
“It’s a place with a special aura. You feel at home here with the Bachs, yet you cannot escape his strict gaze,” he points to the oft-reproduced likeness of the Leipzig cantor. “He looks like the kind of person you’d like to have a glass of wine with, but at the same time, his eyes make you want to try hard at a concert.”
For him, Bach is the cornerstone of all music, the number one personality, and although this almost fanatical concentration on a single artist may appear to be a sign of conservatism, Koopman has a lively, almost intimate relationship with him.
“There are extraordinary emotions in Bach’s music, unusual, touching. They should bring tears to people’s eyes. His music is contagious, it will sweep you away,” he says. And even though it’s complicated, even if you don’t understand the complexity, you can still enjoy it, he continues. “But when you understand it, it allows you to go deeper and deeper. And that’s great about Bach,” adds Koopman.
Ton Koopman with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir in Prague will also perform Bach’s cantata Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott. Photo: Foppe Schut | Video: The Orchard Enterprises
In 1979, he founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, to which he also joined a choir in 1992. Their most ambitious project was filming a complete cycle of Bach cantatas. It took ten years – after all, it is about more than 200 compositions composed for the Sunday service. Koopman included the most popular ones on the program of the upcoming Prague concert.
On stage, no one would guess his age for this small man with very lively gestures and many grimaces. He is still full of energy, touring the USA, Canada and Japan. “I want to be here until I’m a hundred years old,” he laughs. Eight cups of espresso a day also provided him with energy. Now he has limited the number. “My musicians were afraid that I would have a heart attack. And also that I would play too fast,” he notes.
Unlike many of his colleagues who later ventured into the realms of newer or even contemporary music, Ton Koopman strictly sticks to one era. “Mozart’s death is the limit for me,” he says. He means the year 1791. But sometimes he makes an exception, like when he included the work of the “avant-gardist” Johannes Brahms on the program of a concert in China. However, he does not avoid the possibility of conducting old music with modern orchestras.
The passion for all things old is not limited to compositions and instruments, but also extends to old books. It began inconspicuously when, as a teenager, he picked up a 17th-century Dutch publication in an antiquarian bookshop.
Since then, his collection has long outgrown the dimensions of the house, and he has already donated 25,000 volumes and scores to the library in Utrecht. “My wife says it’s a disease, not contagious anyway,” he laughs. He and his wife, harpsichordist Tini Mathot, have been together for 50 years and perform together in concerts.
Ton Koopman does not like the word authentic. “When you call yourself authentic, it means that you know everything and everyone else is an idiot. But the more you know, the more you discover how much remains to be discovered. We have arrived at something and the next generation has to verify if we were right,” he thinks .
What if one day he met his role model in heaven? He would have liked Bach to say to him: you took care of my music, thanks for that, it wasn’t bad. “It wasn’t bad, that would be the greatest compliment for me from Bach,” he concludes.
Concert
(Organized by the Prague Spring Festival)
Ton Koopman & Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir
Rudolfinum, June 2