During the three decades of his career, pianist, harpsichordist, and conductor Jos van Immerseel has come to embody period performance practice in early (and not so early) music.
Jos van Immerseel has always explored historically informed music making from both sides of the coin. He is a passionate researcher who systematically investigates the relation(s) between composition, instrument, and playing technique for every concert or cd, building on his fine collection of historical keyboard instruments which spans two centuries.
Van Immerseel, however, is in the first place a musician, who reconstructs and recreates early music not for the museum, but for the sake of living music lovers, who all too often have grown accustomed to a historical travesties of a composer’s original intentions. According to Van Immerseel, “one cannot pay greater hommage to a composer than by taking his music seriously, in a performance which combines both freedom and duty”.
As a soloist Jos van Immerseel enjoys international recognition on the concert stage. His recordings have earned him various prestigious awards, including the Diapason d’Or, Le Choc du Monde de la Musique, and FFFF de Télérama.
In order to put his performance ideas into orchestral practice, van Immerseel founded the period ensemble Anima Eterna in 1987. With Anima, Jos has “rediscovered” many highlights of the classical catalogue, from Mozart’s piano concertos over the Strauss waltzer to Ravel’s Bolero.
Since 2002, Jos van Immerseel is responsible for the Collection Anima Eterna with the label Zig-Zag Territoires (Outhere). Chamber music colleagues he regularly performs with are Claire Chevallier, Midori Seiler, Sergei Istomin and Thomas Bauer.
Anima Eterna Brugge is in residence in the Concertgebouw Brugge, and has a partnership with the city of Brugge. Since 2010, Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna Brugge are ‘artiste associé’ et ‘ensemble associé de l’Opéra de Dijon’.
‘Muziek spelen zoals de componist het hoorde’
gepubliceerd op 04 februari 2012 in de Tijd
> download en lees het artikel hier
‘Een duik in Debussy’
gepubliceerd op 28 januari 2012 in de Standaard
> download en lees het artikel hier
“At a time when, still a student, I was playing a great deal of chamber music, my friend Walter Heynen introduced me to Poulenc’s Sonata for flute and piano. That was in 1961. It was love at first sight. I then began to collect scores and recordings of Poulenc and study his works. Today, half a century later, there is much more information available: numerous interviews, lectures, radio programmes about or with Poulenc, and several video recordings. There is also the fine biography by Renaud Machart (1995) and the titanic labour of Myriam Chimènes, who compiled and annotated Poulenc’s Correspondance 1910-1963. I have made copious use of these publications in the notes that follow. My sincere thanks to their authors.
Why is Anima Eterna Brugge taking up the cause of Poulenc?
When I ‘discovered’ Poulenc’s oeuvre in 1961, I soon realised that his music was more or less universally known. Record shops offered hundreds of LPs of his compositions, the radio stations of the time broadcast him at least once a day, and he enjoyed the honours of concert and recital halls with a frequency comparable to that of Stravinsky. Today, in 2010, the situation is no longer the same: Stravinsky is still extremely present, while Poulenc has almost disappeared. There is probably little point in wondering how and why things have reached this pass; the most useful reaction is to try to remedy the situation. This is why Anima Eterna Brugge and I have decided to turn the spotlight on a number of Poulenc’s works in the present recording. In our view he is one of the most significant personalities of the twentieth century, coupling immense erudition with surprising spontaneity. Not to mention the fact that Poulenc was also a particularly brilliant pianist.”
Jos van Immerseel
“At my first public performance at secondary school, I enthusiastically played Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody on an old Pleyel. In my opinion, this was one of the most ingenious pieces I knew. I often played his Sixth Rhapsody (which is our no.3 for orchestra) but also the other Hungarian Rhapsodies, the Mephisto Waltzes, Funérailles, etc. And on the organ I discovered Ad nos, ad salutarem undam, possibly the best organ piece ever written.
This programme however aims to unveil the different aspects of Liszt’s orchestral work, with the instruments that must have been familiar to Liszt. In fact, this will probably be the first performance on period instruments of his work in the history of the ‘early music revival’. That is why I am extremely happy to be able finally to explore his work for orchestra, because since 1963 (for forty long years), my admiration for Liszt has only increased. My respect does not only go out to one aspect or one piece of the maestro, but I am now fascinated by his complete oeuvre, his significance, his charisma, his pianistic insights, his art of orchestration, his humanism, his revolutionary ideas, his modernistic musical language, his literary gift and his sharp intelligence.”
Jos van Immerseel
