Musician Claudio Astronio: “My aim is to take at the moment’s listeners to Baroque instances” | Tradition

Touring loads to the world’s most well-known halls in Europe, the USA, South America, earlier than stopping within the port metropolis of Lithuania, he shared his ideas on how baroque music turned the primary melody of his life, when the whole lot began with far more fashionable rhythms.

– Posters all the time say “world-renowned harpsichordist, organist and conductor” subsequent to your title. What attracted you to outdated music and the devices of these instances?

– I can reply in a single phrase – freedom! When performing early music, it’s essential to delve into and research the outdated treatises through which authors and musicians describe how they performed of their age. In these books, the commonest phrases are “inegual” (lit. unequal, uneven), “non mesureé” (items with out bar size references, writing down the commonly accepted meter rhythm system, with out full fixation of the feel), “non star soggetti a battuta” (which means , the identical as earlier than – to play freely with out following the precise metric indication of the beat), “improvisations” and “free ornamentations” (lit. free taking part in, free ornamentation). Baroque permits every bit of music to be at liberty and improvisational, whereas in classical music, for instance, each be aware appears to be boxed right into a body, the composer arranging each wobble of the melody with a really strict precision of seconds. Baroque is a totally completely different world in comparison with the music of the final two centuries – and I say this to you as a former rock and jazz performer who was properly conscious of the probabilities of improvisation, however immersed himself within the discovery and research of different music.

Private album photograph/Claudio Astronio

– Some would say that outdated music is experiencing a renaissance in live performance halls. Would you agree with that? If that’s the case, why?

– I do not know what the viewers experiences when they’re at outdated music live shows, I can solely reply as a performer. After all, residing within the twenty first century. and when taking part in works which might be a number of centuries outdated, it’s tough to play the best way the outdated masters did again then. So the performer has to maneuver his thoughts from the current day to these instances in an effort to create the ambiance of that period.

Solely on this means will the listener plunge again a number of centuries to completely really feel what the composer’s contemporaries felt when listening to Baroque music within the Seventeenth-18th centuries. That is the one strategy to put together an “excellent” early music, stuffed with contrasts and one thing that might transfer the viewers emotionally – that was the aim of the Baroque.

And my aim is to make use of early authentic or reconstructed devices and an unconventional strategy to the stage and the viewers to create that baroque sense of freedom. I can say from my expertise that the listener loves it.

– Your musical journey started with a totally completely different music style – rock music. Songs written in his youth received a number of vital awards in gentle music competitions. How did you get from rock guitar to harpsichord and organ?

– Once I was 17, I visited an organ live performance. That music enchanted me a lot that my journey in direction of outdated music started. I can not say that I’ve forgotten about fashionable music, as a result of rock and pop music nonetheless curiosity me. I composed songs in these kinds till the 2010s, and performed keyboards reside for a few years. These musical worlds went facet by facet in my life and actually complemented one another.

– You’ll carry out in Klaipėda, a metropolis by the ocean – what does the ocean imply to you? You follow freediving – what do you search for and discover within the depths?

– I really like the mountains, I really like the ocean, I follow mountain biking and I am keen on feeling the intense factors of mom earth, each up there and much under the water. For me, the music of the planet is a form of meditation, a strategy to recharge my mind for brand spanking new concepts for future musical tasks. And naturally I really feel deep and robust feelings when I’m at 3000m or 15m under clear water. Contrasts… Baroque!

Private album photograph/Claudio Astronio

– This system you introduced, known as “Father, Sons and Godfather”, is intriguingly harking back to the long-lasting movie “The Godfather”. Are you able to inform us what listeners can count on from this distinctive musical journey?

– They’ll expertise and picture the work of a terrific musical workforce: Johann Sebastian Bach labored collectively together with his two eldest sons: they performed music collectively, led classes, composed cantatas each week, performed the organ within the church, ready workout routines for college students. They created music that I’ll play in Klaipėda.

However an important musician and composer of this age was not Bach, it was really Georg Philipp Telemann. Telemann liked Bach, acknowledged his unparalleled mastery, and so far as we all know, they have been good mates. The truth is, Telemann was the godfather of Carl Philipp Emanuel’s second son. That is the explanation for the title of this system “Father, Sons and Godfather”.

Claudio Astronio’s live performance on the Klaipėda Live performance Corridor on June 7, 6 p.m. half-hour