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It must be all the nicer to be Lars Ulrik Mortensen right now, waiting excitedly in the wings to give the Léonie Sonning Music Award concerts in June, at which he will both demonstrate his talents for harpsichord playing and his unique ability to create musical meaning when he plays so-called Early Music with immediate physical appeal.
Lars Ulrik, if we look at this objectively, it seems as though the work done by you and your colleagues to promote Early Music on original instruments has really paid off, also politically. 2007 looks like being a new highpoint. Can it get any better, in this best of all possible worlds?
"I look upon the award more as a kind of beginning," says Lars Ulrik Mortensen on the line from Austria. "When you work in the artistic sphere you never reach a point at which you can stop and say, 'Right, now that's finished'. The distinction associated with the Léonie Sonning Music Award is after all always retrospective, and has an element of stock-taking about it. But I intend to use the award to look forward, not to come to a halt. I have always been critical about the reproductive forces in music; those who blindly follow tradition. And we have a duty towards a musical repertoire that might otherwise be forgotten."
But when the official Danish music world gives this stamp of approval to you, and your work with the Baroque ensemble Concerto Copenhagen, it must also imply a kind of political guarantee for the future?
"There is clearly a political element in it, and yes, I regard the award as a stamp of approval of the movement to which I belong. And of course, if people really feel that what I am involved in is important, they will naturally also create a platform to ensure that we can continue to perform music in our own way in future."
So you see the award as an implicit promise of greater political attention? In a small country like Denmark it is after all more or less the same people who make the decisions.
"I think it is best to take things as they come," advises Mortensen. "In any case, it is the task of myself and my colleagues to try to achieve the highest artistic level that we can."
Mortensen, who was 50 last year, has placed himself comfortably in the vanguard of those progressive Danish musicians who refuse to acknowledge the status quo. Music must take place in the here and now, and must fascinate people through its plastic dynamics rather than mechanical rhetoric. Before Lars Ulrik Mortensen became artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen (CoCo) in 1999, an awareness of historical instruments and performance practice was largely conspicuous by its absence in Danish musical life. The performances of Händel's Julius Caesar under his leadership at the Royal Theatre in 2002 marked a spectacular breakthrough for the historical music wave in Denmark. The following year, Mortensen, man of the hour, announced that he would no longer conduct orchestras performing on modern instruments.
"And I have never regretted that decision," he says today. "I believe that Early Music works best with the original instruments, and given that attitude it is not a good idea to place me at the head of a modern orchestra which does its best, but is not the ideal forum. It is best to stick exclusively to what I really believe in."
Can you name two clear successes you have experienced with Baroque instruments?
"Both have been with CoCo. Firstly, the two sessions at the Royal Theatre with Julius Caesar, at which I felt, 'My God, this just couldn't get any more wonderful.' And I felt the same way about our Christmas concert at the Garnison Church in 2004 – a concert that CoCo will be presenting in small samples, like an Advent calendar, at its website throughout December. We demonstrated a breadth that far exceeded what I had imagined possible, and things acquired their own dynamics and energy."
To this – in the writer's opinion – you could add Haydn's 52nd symphony, an inspired version of Monteverdi’s ‘Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria', a surprisingly romantic ouverture to 'La Clemenza di Tito’ by Mozart, a sweatily intense final movement from Mozart's symphony in G minor, a wonderfully colourful Rameau, and an intimate, delightfully improvised Purcell programme with Mortensen on harpsichord, accompanying mezzo soprano Tuva Semmingsen. The picture begins to form of a brilliant artist with many dimensions – and an obstinate and stubborn level of ambition.
How would you rate your work with Concerto Copenhagen on a list of the greatest achievements of the Baroque ensembles in the world today?
"That's not for me to say, I’ll leave that to independent observers. It doesn't interest me a great deal, either. Things like prestige, good reviews and engagements are to some extent deserved, but they also rest upon a number of factors over which we have no influence. And there is no absolute hierarchy – end of story. But if we compare the current situation with where we were five or six years ago, we might conclude that our current level of activity is higher than we had dared hope, especially abroad. At present, the ensemble works really smoothly. We have a complement which includes the right people, and on a purely organisational level we have streamlined the ensemble, which gives us more time for the music."
Lars Ulrik Mortensen describes himself as an "amateur" in the role of conductor. He has received no formal training in conducting, but no one who has seen him conduct CoCo, for example, will ever forget his dynamic and forceful expression.
"In a strictly technical and psychological sense, I am an amateur. I took up conducting by default, because I kept receiving offers I could not refuse. My technical limitations are self-evident, and once in a while they produce problems for the players – as well as making life more difficult for myself. CoCo knows me well, and they know how much to subtract from my facial expressions, but with my other orchestra, the European Union Baroque Orchestra, which changes its complement every year, a certain process of adaptation is necessary every time."
What is your ideal in music?
"It has always been to create phrasing that arises organically from as many details as possible. The overall lines are the sum of the details; the detailed rhythm, intonation and rhythmic swing. In vocal music I focus a great deal on the link between the lyrics and the music, the intonation of the individual words. The aim is to create the impression that the music materializes in the here and now, not because it says so in the notes, or is something that we in the orchestra are doing for our own pleasure. It is something we do to communicate, to involve the listener."
In contrast to John Eliot Gardiner and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the two previous recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Award, you don't seem to be interested in reaching out beyond Early Music?
"My personal taste extends up to and including early or mid-period Beethoven. That's where my heart lies. After that the dimensions become too large for me, the aural impact too loud, in both the physical and the spiritual sense. It may sound banal, but when the music gets too epic, I lose interest. When music is assumed to contain a catalogue of universal truths. I just don't trust absolutes."
But could anything be more absolute than Bach's faith in God?
"You are right in a sense, but the means that Bach employs to express his unswerving faith in God are revealed more by way of hints. If the word "God" makes sense in the case of Bach; providence or meaning may be better words. His trust in authority does not give rise to the need to shout out some truth or other, but rather to suggest it. There is a very wide framework for interpretation in Bach, but he is much more challenging, because he is less blunt. He appeals much more to my temperament than the broad statements of the Romantics."
It is has yet to be decided which pieces Lars Ulrik Mortensen will offer us when he accepts the Léonie Sonning Music Award, but it is a reasonable certainty that he will demonstrate his skills as a solo harpsichordist as well as his work with Concerto Copenhagen.
Michael Bo is cultural correspondent for the Danish newspaper Politiken.
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