“Growing up, the conductor Maxime Pascal was a self-identified musical dilettante.
As a child in the south of France, he had some skill on the violin, and sat in on the piano lessons his mother taught. At night, he watched his father play New Orleans jazz. But he didn’t really listen to classical music until he was 18.
Now, though, Pascal, 37, is arguably his generation’s finest conductor of 20th-century music, as well as an essential interpreter of contemporary works. And his schedule reflects both the breadth of his ambition and the respect he has garnered on some of the industry’s most prestigious stages.
Pascal has a similar headlong approach today. He and Le Balcon don’t repeat programs, so he is constantly learning new scores. In a sense, he has never stopped catching up. “Doing that,” he said, “you will keep a child’s curiosity forever. You will be marveling at small details until the end of your life.”
Whether with Le Balcon or a new orchestra like the Vienna Philharmonic, Pascal is striving to realize the ideal performance in his mind but also aiming for simple satisfaction. “It can be very difficult to accept, as an artist, that everything you will do is only a picture of what you are at that moment,” he said. “You may never reach what you are searching for, but you are always approaching it.”
Source:
Barone, J. (2023, August 16). A conductor who wants to put you “inside the sound.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/arts/music/maxime-pascal-le-balcon.html
Analysis:
Some of the paragraphs above are taken out of their context within the rest of the article, but I just found what Pascal had to say was deeply moving and inspiring. He truly is an artist and he does a good job of articulating that experience. He said that constantly learning new things helps “keep a child’s curiosity forever.” I think this also reflects in his performances. If the novelty is still there for the artist, then there is a good chance that same feeling of wanderlust will be communicated to the audience. Educating and inspiring future generations could be approached with a similar tact and we could have a more imaginative and engaged society as a result.
