LDV113-4

35 MICHEL BOUVARD Can you say something about recording at Saint-Sernin? Emotionally, it’s difficult to record this music, because a successful realisation of a discourse like Franck’s is so closely bound up with inspiration! Even on a recording, you’re still playing ‘for someone’, the sound engineer, the assistants, the recording producer, so you’re very excited on the first take. The second take consists of reproducing the direction of what you did on the first take, if possible ‘better’. But the more you apply yourself, the more you gain, at best, in quality of finish what you lose, to some extent, in spontaneity. Musicians are also actors. We have to find a natural way of playing, to make our listeners forget the text and grasp the meaning; we invite them on a journey into a world where we have tried to reach the composer. There are many ways to play a musical phrase by Franck. To say that an interpretation recorded at a given moment is ‘definitive’ seems to me illusory. Although I’ve been playing Franck’s music for forty years, and have taught it for a long time too, I don’t want it to appear ‘fixed’ here. In fact, my dearest wish is that this album should be listened to like a concert.