22 BACH TO NOTRE-DAME In short, each piece you perform has passed through the prism of time and its successive performers . . . Yes, and that is so true that, for this recording, I actually relearned some pieces, even though I’ve been playing them for thirty years. But you’re right, I cannot forget all the organists who nurtured Bach’s output. Both my own teacher, Gaston Litaize, and the documents we have from before and after him from organists like Louis Vierne, Marcel Dupré, Pierre Cochereau, Marie-Claire Alain, Michel Chapuis and André Isoir, to speak only of French musicians. In Germany, I’d have to mention Karl Straube and Helmut Walcha; but unfortunately I can’t give an exhaustive list here. However, I don’t view historical performances in a backward-looking and sterile way. What would be the point of plagiarising what my predecessors achieved? The art of interpretation is constantly evolving, just as our sonic and aesthetic perception differs from that of artists of the past. Once again, we can only be ‘historically informed’, in the sense of the English formula ‘historically informed performance’. Why, in that case, am I moved when I hear Louis Vierne play Herzlich tut mich verlangen BWV 727 at Notre-Dame in 1929? It sounds quite magnificent! I have the same feeling when I listen to the version of the Pièce d’orgue BWV 572 that Marcel Dupré recorded at Saint-Sulpice in Paris. I find a source of inspiration in these interpretations, even if my conception of the works is different.
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