| One of the most brilliant harpsichordists of today, Dutchman Bob van Asperen, starts our series of deep interviews: conversations that reach above pure music and are followed by the Proust Questionnaire. Ambrosio Lacosta spoke with Bob van Asperen on the Arago-nese side of the Pyrenees last August.
The official biography of this tall and lanky Dutchman states that he was born in Amsterdam in 1947, studied with Gustav Leonhardt and teaches harpsichord at the Sweenlinck Conservatory in that city. In reality, he is the product of an original mix of Southern temperament and Dutch discretion. A dedicated playactor overflowing with vitality, kind and tender, his curiosity knows no limits. With his keen and sometimes corrosive sense of humour, this lover of tapas and Romanesque architecture does not, however, profess the same love for bullfighting, since his fondness of the bovine race, which he demonstrates in a very expressive way, impedes him from admiring this tradition.
Seeing him so relaxed and contented, no one could imagine that he is one of the world’s best harpsichordists. Over the next few days together, we would visit various places, amid his growing enthusiasm: San Juan de la Peña, Santa Cruz de la Serós, Huesca, Castillo de Loarre, Los Mallos de Riglos… As in the summer of 1996, he reflected his unceasing amazement in an old travel diary, in which he went about plotting the itineraries he recalled and where the remains of the enigmas and symbols contained in capitals and frescos were to be found.
In 1996 Bob van Asperen conducted the Baroque Orchestra of the European Union during this admirable festival on the pilgrims’ road to Santiago de Compostela. Today, the festival has brought him back for a harpsichord recital of works by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was in this context, travelling with nature and music, with my improvised and desperate, but vivid, French that, without the inconvenience of a tape recorder, I took the following notes, merely a pale reflection of what language cannot express. |
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