Could you tell us how the idea of filming the Emerson String Quartet’s farewell recording with soprano Barbara Hannigan came about?
Ten days before the recording session, Barbara suddenly turned to me and said: “My god, this will really be their last record!”
Her gaze was overcome with dizziness.
She had already sung at concerts with Emerson but had never recorded with them. Now she was to record with them, on what was to be their last record…
Feeling moved, she begged me to keep a trace of that moment.
As the Emersons are icons in classical music, I found a production company and could have gone there with a team but I felt that I had to do things differently.
The studio had to remain the musicians’ space, given that the process is extremely intimate, as the name, chamber music, suggests.
So I had to team up with myself, money-wise too!
How did you build up your relationship with the protagonists in order to film them in this intimate professional setting?
Thanks to Barbara, I already knew them. We get on really well.
It was all there already, to be honest. It was an interaction.
To start with, I went barefoot to not make any noise.
Then I had to place myself between them in a mental and physical space that seemed impenetrable.
I had a hunch that the coldness of a surveillance camera could perhaps, paradoxically, engage the viewer and make the mystery of listening palpable. 1+1+1+1+1 = …1 !
As my Lumix GH5-S could be attached to very discreet microphone stands, I started by placing them, turning them on (as well as the microphones) and then disappearing so that the “interaction” remained just between them.
Gradually, like a famished cat, when the red recording light wasn’t on, I allowed myself to vary the frames, to move the cameras nearer (I like filming with fixed lenses). From the second day, I’d entered into the circle, crouching on the floor in between them. Their crazy sense of humour did the rest…
Guido Tichelman, the record’s sound engineer, says to you in the film that his pleasure comes via the ears, and yours via the eyes. How did you respond to the challenge of depicting in images an artform that favours listening?
Indeed it troubled me that he preferred not to see them in order to record them better. Poor guy, I thought, he’s going to miss out… So almost out of pity I filmed him in his separate little booth, to show him what I saw. That’s when I understood: he sees through what he hears. The voice of God ! Only he sees and hears the music at the time.
In the end, the filming is a similar process. Hearing comes through their filmed faces, their whole bodies, together and separated (oh please, not just the fingers!). With Svetlana Vaynblat, editor and musician, this is surely how the split-screens came about. Or the back-and-forths between musicians playing and musicians listening to each other.
Looks became sounds, and the music became palpable. The mixer Olivier Goinard (also a musician) felt it physically, amplified by Guido’s confidence in him. Guido handed over his entire session to him, all 25 microphone tracks..!
Interview by Margot Mecca
