In this masterclass, the virtuoso cellist Anner Bylsma alternates between early and modern instruments and repertoires with the taste of eclecticism so characteristic of him.
Anner Bylsma, a simple, smiling man whose glance radiates kindness, shares his artistry with us. He is one of the world's leading cellists. Despite the various facets of his career – a musician in the Amsterdam Concertbegouw orchestra, a noted soloist, an interpreter of contemporary music – Anner Bylsma is generally pigeonholed as one of the fathers of the revival of Baroque music in the 1970s, alongside Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt, the Kuijken brothers, Frans Brüggen, and that whole generation of turbulent Dutchmen who turned the interpretation of early music upside down once and for all.
The repertoire he tackles here with amateurs of a high standard corresponds perfectly to the world of Anner Bylsma: Romantic with Auguste-Joseph Franchomme, contemporary with the Belgian composer Henri Pousseur, Baroque with Domenico Gabrielli, and naturally Jean-Sébastien Bach, on whom he is one of the most scrupulous of experts.
Anner Bylsma is all smiling authority and a capacity for concentration which he transmits to his pupils. He plays with an impenetrable expression, focusing on the music, except when he must check on something in the playing of his partner or his pupil. For him, a lesson lasts no more than ten seconds, the time it takes to reach a profound understanding of the detail which will change everything. He states simple truths about vibrato – one does not venerate the same way in the major as in the minor; he reminds us that phrasing is linked with rhetoric in a Bach suite, that a dance rhythm is not jerky...
Private music lessons: twelve hugely influential program broadcast by French television between 1987 and 1991. The guiding principle for Olivier Bernager and François Manceaux was to capture the art of the leading performers of our time, live in concert but also and above all in a teaching environment.
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