Brian Robins caught up with Martin Gester in Paris, where he was in the midst of a series of performances of Mozart’s "Coronation" Mass, which he was performing along with several of the composer’s Litanies with Le Parlement de Musique, the ensemble he founded in 1990. With him was his wife Aline Zylberajch, a distinguished keyboard player in her own right, whose help with the occasional language problem in the ensuing discussion is gratefully acknowledged.

You are much associated with the Alsace region. Le Parlement de Musique is based in Strasbourg and you teach at the Department of Early Music at Strasbourg Conservatoire. Do you originally come from that area?
Yes, I was born there and have always lived there. I studied at Strasbourg University and then later the Conservatoire. The boarding school I went to had an excellent boys choir that sung a lot of sixteenth-century polyphonic music and while there I also became a pianist and organist, taking responsibility for playing for the liturgy.

Those were my first musical experiences, but they meant that by the time I came to go rather late to the Conservatoire I already had a well-developed ear in addition to a somewhat empirical technique for conducting a choir, singing and playing the organ. Before going there I went to the University, where I read Literature and later taught Latin and Greek. Later still, when I found the time, came the harpsichord. Those experiences defined what I wanted to do - to be involved with ...

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