#15 Lillian Gordis
… on a holistic approach in performing and the role of social media for Early Music
Lillian Gordis (b. 1992) is a Paris-based harpsichordist. Hailed as ‘a Martha Argerich of the harpsichord’ and praised for her ‘sculpting of time, ‘impressive virtuosity’ and ‘intensity of touch’ by critics such as Diapason, Scherzo, Fono Forum and ResMusica, Lillian performs regularly as a soloist and with her duo partner Jérôme Hantaï across Europe and the United States.
2020 turned out to turn all our lives upside down – how did this year turn out for you?
2020 was one of the most interesting years of my life, strangely enough. It was an awful, boring and frustrating experience, but I feel that I learned a tremendous amount about facing insecurities and fears, and having more self-confidence - it was an opportunity to take apart old tics, bad habits and reflexes, and confront issues more directly. This necessarily impacted my playing for the better because I could shed an old skin and allow myself to work more intuitively and listen better.
I only had two concerts last year – the rest were cancelled – in Rome and Neuchâtel with my duo partner Jérôme Hantaï. France’s lockdown fell just days after that last concert and I struggled to find my footing and reorient myself. I really missed not getting to do the US tour Jérôme and I had scheduled for Oct. 2020, but luckily, I was able to make my second solo album for my label Paraty instead.
Now I haven’t performed a concert since 7 March 2020, and nothing has been confirmed yet for the future. That is unthinkable for a performer. This has led to a lot of anxiety about the total lack of perspective on when concerts might start up again, and a serious concern about how less mediatized artists might be ignored during and after the crisis.
Could you tell us about your first encounter with the harpsichord?
I remember very distinctly playing the instrument at the home of my first teacher, Katherine Perl, in San Francisco for the first time in 2002 and this tremendous sense of connection between my fingers and the plucking point on the keyboard. I always remember this as my first encounter and I never really wanted to play piano again, even though I love much of that repertoire.
After your critically acclaimed first album “Zones” with music by Scarlatti, released in 2019, you just recorded your second album with music by J. S. Bach, which will be a very personal album. What is the concept behind it and how did you get the idea for it?
Well I had the idea very gradually. When we were all locked down (in France very intensely so), I wasn’t sure how to cope with that situation, and I started to take out all these Bach pieces from my childhood that I hadn’t played for about 10-15 years. I needed to reconnect with some more innocent, childlike part of myself perhaps. So I started to very intensively immerse myself in the English Suites, the Partitas and of course the Well-Tempered Clavier. As a homeschooled kid, I had played these pieces for hours and hours. They had been my best friends, my enemies, my biggest challenge. Over the silent spring of 2020, the concept for this recording was born. I narrowed down a selection of pieces that were most precious to me and decided on a double-disk with a mirrored program.
The recording was also made during a lockdown, the second one in November 2020, with my dear friend and sound engineer Aline Blondiau. I decided to record in Haarlem, where Leonhardt and the Hantaï brothers have frequently recorded. It was an amazing experience to finally hear the space in person - it sounded just as I had always imagined! My playing responded and dialogued with space in a unique way, and I felt at home, surrounded by decades of history.
So perhaps the concept of this recording is most importantly about human connections – an homage to my family and loved ones in this time of tremendous isolation.
What is your wish for your own artistic future? Did the pandemic give you new perspectives and visions?
My wish is to have a more holistic approach to the industry. In an ideal world, I would split my concerts 50/50 solo and chamber music because I learn more about life from making music with other people and it shapes my solo playing. I would also like to have access to more opportunities to perform around the world, opportunities that have sometimes been lacking because of a very aggressive market approach by a handful of big labels and organizations. I dream of a world in which we harpsichordists would happily share work amongst ourselves and appreciate each other for our differences. I am not an artist who is seeking to play 100 dates a year, but I would like to see more evolution in the relationship between programmers and soloists, more curiosity and better communication, so that someone like me, who is kind of “outside of the system” can have more opportunities to perform.
In each interview we have a carte blanche for the artist – here you go!
The pandemic has highlighted an issue that has bothered me for the last decade or so - how easy it is to project success via social media, even while we all struggle through a truly inhumane experience like the Covid_19 lockdowns. I think that we should carefully consider how much impact social media is having on the future of our community and take better care of it through real human connections. If we allow Early Music to become a social media phenomenon – exacerbated by online concerts – we will lose all grounding and relevance. What happened in the United States on 6 Jan. 2021 is a startling and essential example of how distorted peoples’ worldview becomes when exclusively filtered through screens, timelines, and carefully curated photos. I urge the whole community to rethink how much we allow these filters, which respond neither to chronology or reality, to dictate the trends that govern our small and precious cultural contribution.
And look out for the Bach CD, out Fall 2021 ;-)
Thanks for taking part in our interview, Lillian!