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Renaud Capuçon: On Partnerships and the Quest for Musical Perfection

Jeff Kaliss on February 9, 2015
Renaud Capuçon
Renaud Capuçon, photo by Mat Hennek

 

Chatting with us by telephone from his home in Paris, Renaud Capuçon's attention was understandably divided between the interview and Elliott, his 4-year-old son.

Understandable, since this home time is just a break from daddy’s extensive touring with pianist Khatia Buniatishvili (the pair will play three dates at Bay Area venues starting Feb. 14), and other collaborations around the globe, not to mention Capuçon’s various recording projects.

Born in Chambéry in the Alpine region of eastern France, Capuçon started conservatory training at age 14, returning to found a festival near his hometown at the age of 20. A year later, he was made concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, from which he went on to guest with many other ensembles and to appear in chamber, solo, and duo arrays, sometimes with his cellist younger brother, Gautier.

Capuçon and Buniatishvili’s current concert program is heard on an Erato Disques recording, released last October.

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You and Khatia Buniatishvili both live in Paris now. Do you perform together there?
We played a recital in October — the same program [as in the Bay Area], actually — and we did another recital two years ago. You can’t play the same thing in Paris. We met, like, six years ago. I met her at the Martha Argerich Project in Lugano, and then I heard her first — in Monte Carlo I think it was — six years ago in a master class, and I said, “Let’s try to play together, ‘cause you’re amazing!” … We played Franck’s Sonata and Bach … and I knew it would work because when I heard her, I could feel the kind of musician she was.

What were you feeling?
It was always like this in my life: When I meet a musician with whom I am going to play after, it’s almost animal. It’s a sixth sense. Of course, there are some qualities of sound which are very important, of phrasing. But it’s a special connection, more like when you meet somebody in life, a friend or a lover, somebody you know straightaway you can spend hours being with, and you’ll be fine. … I have to say, with age—I’m not old but I’m going to be 40 next year, so with 20 years of musical experience—you develop this kind of sixth sense.

Something interesting about Khatia: She played for a while with [violinist] Gidon Kremer, and I played a lot, since 15 years, with Martha Argerich, and Martha and Gidon are a real couple in music. And it’s quite nice to see that now we have the next generation, which also likes to play together. I’m not comparing her with Martha or me with Gidon, not at all — we’re completely different — but this strong connection between Argerich and Kremer is also present in Khatia and me, though in a different way. And of course, it was not planned; It was completely spontaneous.

How much does new music matter to you? Your discography seems to focus mostly on older works.
I recorded Berg, and the Dutilleux concerto, which was written about ten years ago. … The last six, seven years, inspired by Gidon and Anne-Sophie Mutter, both of whom commissioned a lot of new pieces, I began to commission some concerti. Last month was a new concerto by Wolfgang Rihm, which is absolutely amazing. … Next year will be a piece of [Guillaume] Connesson. … I commission every year a [new work]. … Next month I’m playing the [Magnus] Lindberg concerto. … In October I will play, with the Berlin Philharmonic, the [Matthias] Pintscher concerto.

Of course, you can’t record all the time because you need to sell, and you know how the market is. My dream is to be able to record all the pieces I commissioned; we’ll see. … I try to be a very complete musician, not just to say it, but because I love it. I love to play Bach, but I love to play Rihm and then to play a string quartet and the next day to play a Mendelssohn concerto.

What about your younger brother, [cellist] Gautier, does he feel similarly about types of music, including when you’re playing together?
You know, we play a bit less these last years, and it’s good because we played so much together before. … For five or six years we played maybe 30 Brahms Double [Concerto] every year — it was too much. … Now, we played it in December with the Vienna Philharmonic, and I think we had not played it for two years. And it felt amazing, because we were excited, we took a lot of risks. Even though we’d played it together a hundred times, it felt like the first time. It’s like, if you don’t see your wife for six months, it would not be the same as seeing her every day.

I don’t think mine would let us be apart for six months.
Same with mine. [Laughs]

Your wife, Laurence Ferrari, is a journalist, but she doesn’t report on music, does she?
Not at all. She was the TV news anchor for four years on the French channel TF1, the most-watched news in Europe, so she was a big star in France. And now she’s doing a show every morning on a channel owned by Canal+. And every night, she has a politics show, from 6 – 7:30. Her DNA is really politics.

But it’s wonderful because she also loves music. She’s a pianist. And it opens my mind so much. So many musicians — and me too, before meeting her — we are always so much focused on ourselves and the music and we think the world is turning around us. It’s not really true! [Laughs] It’s also very good for the ego to feel that, when I come home, I’m not the violinist who played the day before in a concert hall in Vienna, I’m the father of my son, and life is as it should be.

I want to go back to my interview with Khatia Buniatishvili a few months ago. She said about first meeting Martha Argerich, “What I saw on stage, it was the same person as in life.” Do you feel that way about Khatia?
You can’t really hide on stage, unless you do it on purpose. Khatia is absolutely transparent in that she is a very spontaneous person, very generous, and she’s like this on stage. Very honest. A very pure musician. Of course, there are things I couldn’t tell you about Khatia in life because I’m not her lover or her husband. … But she has an amazing musical instinct, which fits completely to my musical world. Even though she’s from [the nation of] Georgia and I’m from France — we don’t have the same lives — when we play together, we have the same language.

Khatia has an amazing musical instinct. Even though she’s from [the nation of] Georgia and I’m from France—we don’t have the same lives—when we play together, we have the same language.Was it a mutual decision to pick the repertoire for this recording and concert tour?
The immediate decision was to record together the Franck Sonata [in A Major]. We couldn’t really decide on the rest, but I told her, “I think if we also do the Grieg [Sonata] No. 3 [in C Minor], it would be wonderful.” She didn’t know the piece. I told her, “Just listen to it.” I knew it was for her and she called me back and said, “It’s wonderful.” And for the Dvořák [Four Romantic Pieces, Op. 75], I suggested it to her, and I always thought they were pieces of jewelry, very beautiful.

And then we worked together and have played them in concert a lot. We wanted to do exactly the same program from the CD [on this tour], not for marketing reasons but just because it’s a perfect program … This program is just having fun! And when we decided on these three pieces I felt that, although they were composers from three different countries, it felt romantic in a good way. Then I did an interview and the journalist said, “It’s wonderful that you chose three pieces composed within a year of each other” [1886-1887]. It’s totally by chance! It’s just amazing!

Is the Sonata unique among all the Franck that you know? I’m a big Franck fan, and what stands out for me is the last movement, something so sweet. And the give-and-take between violin and piano there is so precious. And unlike a lot of Franck, it’s in a major mode.
I have to say, asking-and-answering with Khatia is a pleasure. With every concert, we go offstage after the Franck and smile at each other: “We did different!” It’s really a feeling of a conversation between us. And funny enough, we speak on stage much more than in life. … I’ve played other Franck, the Quintet is a masterpiece also, but more dramatic, more dark. But this Sonata, especially the last movement, is bringing you to the sky! It’s also a challenge every time, because it’s so well known and we have so many amazing versions in our ears.

Knowing you’re now playing a violin that was once owned by Isaac Stern, I wonder whether you’d ever seen the video of Stern playing this Sonata with Jean-Bernard Pommier.
I know more the version of Stern and [Alexander] Zakin, which is on CD. Clearly, Stern and I have the same violin, but we are very different. I think we would be more similar musicians than violinists. He had a completely different way of playing. … What I learned from him was his ability to phrase, and we have that in common. This was for him the most important. He could have been a successful conductor because he always had the big view, you know what I mean. 

You’ve come to his instrument after a series of instruments that included a Vuillaume, a Guadagnini, a Stradivarius. Is there some sort of progression there?
It was always connected to my musical and physical evolution. As a violinist, you change. I’m much more free now than when I was 20. You release your tensions. You learn to breathe, not to be stressed, and all of this contributes to your playing better the violin. You have a better attitude, and it sounds better. When I first got Stern’s [Guarneri] del Gesù, it was a real love story.  Straightaway, I understood it would bring me nearer this dream of sound. Musicians all have a dream of sound, which we never really find, but we spend our lives to look for that ideal, which is also connected to our DNA and what we are. Well, it’s not really the sound that we look for — it’s a kind of truth.

Musicians all have a dream of sound, which we never really find, but we spend our lives to look for that ideal, which is also connected to our DNA and what we are.Since some of our readers are violinists, can you get more particular about the instrument?
The first thing would be, this violin has a voice. It is speaking. Étienne Vatelot [who restored the instrument] told me, for him this violin has the voice of [heldentenor] Jon Vickers! In a way, it gives me what I don’t naturally have. I have a clear sound, and this gives me the colors I need. … When I play this violin, I have the feeling I can change the gears, with no limit. It gives you a lot of confidence because if you want to play louder, it is there, it is never telling you, “Oh, be careful, I’m at my maximum.” I have the feeling with this violin that the limits would always be my problem, not the problem of the violin. That’s why I say it’s the violin of my life. 

I want to ask about the festival you founded at La Ravoire when you were only 20, though the festival ended in 2010.
I created this festival in ’96 … and I stopped just before my son was born. It was very spontaneous, done with friends, with no money, nobody was paid, it was wonderful. … I stopped because I thought it wasn’t fair not to pay anybody. But we had absolutely no problems. And the year after I stopped, I created the Festival de Pâcques in Aix-en-Provence, which is now happening for the third year. This year, Gidon and Martha are opening. It’s 22 concerts, orchestras — a different level. But the thing that the two festivals have in common is, I just invite people that I love, friends.

In a review of a recent performance by you and Khatia, the London Telegraph said, “They conjure a swooningly powerful and rich sound.” How do you two make people swoon? I’m not sure what the word in French would be.
I have no idea. I hope it’s a quality of the sound. Perhaps it’s the way we play: physically, we are completely free. We almost never look at each other, but we are completely free. Wait and see, and maybe in San Francisco, you will feel the same!