Page 250 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

protocol, which give us an idea of what to do and then we do it. Every interpretation should
by definition be different, if each one is the same then something went wrong. We become
in a way an assistant to the composer ourselves, and if the interpretation is always
presented the same then that is a job badly done. We have to be different!”

Playing solo Britten at Aldeburgh, as Gerhardt will do with the Cello Suite no.1, presents a
special challenge. “It was scary when I did it the first time”, he admits. “but now the scary
part is out I’m just going to enjoy it. András Schiff told me once that the older he gets the
more nervous he gets. I find the older I get, the less I care about other people and what they
think. I want to transmit what I feel about the music, and the older I get the more I dare to
really do what I want, and not follow rules or guidelines. I take Gustav Mahler as an
example, and where he reduced the Adagietto of his Fifth Symphony from nine minutes to
seven minutes when conducting. Less is more!” As a listener, it is good to hear of artistic
development in this way. “As a listener, I don’t want to be bored”, says Gerhardt. I hate it
when people celebrate something where there is nothing to celebrate, like a dog stopping at
every tree!”

Unsuk, meanwhile, will be totally immersed in competing her new opera. “I am writing the
libretto myself as well”, she says, “because I created the story. It is based on the relationship
between an Austrian physician Wolfgang Pauli and Karl Gustav Jung. It is a very complex
story, and I can’t digest it in pure texts. It is about a man who is a genius but who has a very
complicated private life and very interesting, wonderful dream every night. He is suffering,
and therefore wants to be helped – so goes to Karl Gustav Jung and they start analysing
Pauli’s dream. I took this biography as the base and put some fiction in there to write a
story like a new version of Faust. I’m writing the music and the libretto myself, in German.”

The opera is due to be premiered in May 2025, at Hamburg State Opera, conducted by Kent
Nagano, and staged by the English / Irish team Dead Centre. In the meantime a much
smaller piece, Nulla est finis, will act as a companion to Thomas Tallis’ great 40-part
motet Spem in alium, in a festival performance from Tenebrae at Ely Cathedral. “It is
very small”, she says modestly. “It is not a piece, more a small prelude to the Tallis piece.”
Has she listened to much of his music previously? “Not much, but I knew this piece. The
commission came from Sweden, and they wanted a small prelude to Spem in alium, so I
thought it would be nice to compose a kind of entrance where the choir are whispering, and
slowly the tones come in and it goes to Spem in alium.”

Beyond the festival, Gerhardt has a typically busy year – but first a holiday. “I only think up
to June”, he says, “and then I think I have three weeks free!” There are recording plans afoot
with Hyperion, which remain under wraps for now. The Dvořák concerto, which he is
performing in Chicago, would be a wonderful contender. “My view of it has changed,
because I had a look at the facsimile of the piece and a lot of new ideas popped out, so it will
be quite different. I think it’s more like what Dvořák had in mind, and I have to tell
conductors off sometimes now! I find the same with Brahms symphonies, where people do
these same, silly rubatos, and they are lacking in inspiration, because they cannot come up
with their own!”

Finally, the question has to be asked – might there be a Cello Concerto no.2 from Unsuk
Chin? She laughs, a little nervously! “At the moment there is no plan, but you never say
never!” she says. “I would never push for a second one,” says Alban, “because the first one is
so great, and I’ve never played it that I’m 100% happy with myself. If any other cellist was