EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – Luc Baghdassarian

When did you get your first taste of music?
I loved music from an early age because my parents were great music lovers. My mother played the accordion. As for my father, he would have dreamed of being a musician. During our journeys between Lausanne and Geneva, there was always music playing. That’s where I first heard Beethoven’s 9 symphonies. On the cover of an LP my parents owned, there was a photo of Herbert Von Karajan. I showed it to my parents and told them I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. I must have been two and a half…

So you chose your path at an early age?
My first passion was the piano and the violin. Then I studied conducting. My passion for the voice came later. I regularly went to the opera, where I was totally fascinated by soloists and choirs. I then turned to oratorio music.

What are the essential qualities of a conductor or choir director?
First of all, you need to know how to express yourself physically and gesturally. It’s a technical aspect that anyone can learn. For a long time I was a very shy person, but shyness doesn’t work on stage. I had to open up, and that’s when I realized that everything you can learn technically is necessary, but the essential thing is the personality of the person directing. That’s what makes it possible to produce emotion, to enter into osmosis with the musicians and choristers. It took me 10 years to understand how to transform a musical thought into sounds and rhythms. When it happens, it’s overwhelming!

With experience, do you still feel any doubts or fears?
I’ve always had stage fright. But it’s a form of awareness of what can happen on stage. I’m doped by that feeling. In fact, the only time I haven’t had stage fright, I was stung by a wasp before the concert. A terrible experience! Stage fright is positive, it forces you to sublimate yourself.

Do you have a favourite repertoire?
I feel very much at home in the German Romantic repertoire. But I also like to travel through the centuries, exploring creations by contemporary composers. I seek a balance between music of the past and music of the present. I try not to specialize in any one repertoire or artistic notion. I’m interested in all styles: jazz, folk, popular dance music, flamenco, Irish melodies… I’m also passionate about dance, so I’m fascinated by anything that moves the body.

A favorite composer?
Beethoven, above all others! He’s the archetypal rebellious, generous artist. He’s a man who sublimated his pain into art. As a child, I was terrified by his suffering, but today I’m fascinated by the sense of truth he achieved through his art. He achieved the quintessence of what art should be.

Do you enjoy watchmaking?
Enormously! Watchmaking is an art. In fact, a number of parallels could be drawn between music and watchmaking. Beauty that flatters the eye and the imagination, meticulous, almost obsessive precision, the pleasure of giving and, perhaps above all, the notion of time and structure. Music is also the art of the passage of time. As a conductor, I work with my body’s internal pulsations, trying to find the “tempo giusto”. The correlation between the two worlds is obvious.