The artistic legacy of Jos van Immerseel
Anima Eterna wouldn’t be Anima Eterna without the abundance of artistic inspiration it has received from Jos van Immerseel. He founded the orchestra in 1987, expanded it bit by bit, from one production to the next, and made all the major artistic decisions until 2021. His artistic vision, the basis of the Anima Eterna sound, has also fuelled the inquisitive mindset of its musicians. At the same time, Van Immerseel has created a musical culture within the orchestra that relies on the personal responsibility and inspiration of each musician individually.
His work is reflected in the way the musicians of Anima Eterna sit on stage today. In how they feel in the music, how they sound. But above all, in the questions they ask themselves and each other. Out of the (sometimes uneasy) confrontation with an instrument, a particular technique or a score, again and again there comes a new spark: the energy needed to keep searching and experimenting. This ceaseless flow of seeking and finding, then seeking again and finding again, is perhaps Van Immerseel’s greatest legacy. The flow, he feels, can go on forever.
The conviction that music can speak to us, and that composers made use of the laws of rhetoric until well into the nineteenth century, lies at the heart of Van Immerseel’s artistic views. Many of the musicians still remember how, during the recording of the Mozart piano concertos, he spent days dissecting and interpreting each and every rhetorical figure. The result was concertos that ‘spoke’ so clearly and eloquently that they were hailed as ‘new’.
Applause!