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There are many things to finish: interview with Chistopher Hogwood.

Article Excerpt
After an interval of a year the famous English conductor Christopher Hogwood arrived in Prague once again. Over a few days here he recorded a CD of Bohuslav Martinu's ballets of 1927 with the Czech Philharmonic for Supraphon. It was just one of many Christopher Hogwood projects concerned with the music of Martinu. The first was a Martinu CD for DECCA. and the most recent were recordings with the Basel Chamber Orchestra for Arte nova and the first of a CD series covering the complete works of this composer for violin and orchestra.

The world keeps on loosening up, but many people in the music public still have you pigeon-holed as a specialist on baroque music and classicism, even despite that fact that for years now you have been systematically devoting your: self to earlier 20th-century music and conducting combined programmes with pleasure. How do you feel about it, and what do you think is the reason the impression is so persistent?

I really feel that it's not my fault. It's the fault of two things. One is that a lot of people tend to listen to their favourite music only, so that there is often no reason why they should have heard me doing the music of Stravinsky or Bartok or Martinu On the other hand they are people who form their opinion out of the recording catalogues and in the recording catalogues it's very true, the majority of records are early music because of my orchestra. Although there are some 15 or more modern records they aren't such a big proportion in about 250 discs. But I think more and more people are gradually getting the message nowadays. Today I do less and less old music and more and more neo-classical and neo-baroque music.

What fascinates you about the music of neo-classicist composers (of various kinds)?

I think the first thing that I liked was that it's made for some very interesting programming with modern instruments. Because I cannot see any real advantage if you are playing Handel or Corelli to use modern instruments. But if you are playing exclusively Handel and Martinu or Corelli and Strawinsky than there is a very strong reason to use modern instruments and show they can play two styles. And the etiket, the grammar of the two repertoires is very connected. So to the public it makes it a slightly didactic programme, which, I think, is more valuable for me.

How and why did you come to Prague in the 1960s and how did you react to it as someone coming from the free world?

I came 1964-1965 as a graduate scholar on an exchange scheme organized by the British Council. And to tell the truth I came to Prague because I was very late in planning my future. By the time I had planed it nearly every scholarship was finished except, I think, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria or something like this. So I thought maybe Czechoslovakia is just a little bit closer. And also I knew a little bit about Czech music, but not a great deal. But [still in England] one of my friends came to visit me--it was Jasper Parrott and his father Sir Cecil Parrott was Ambassador here and I spoke with him. He translated Svejk for example for Penguin Books. He was very interested in Czech music, he was collecting materials for a biography on Dusek and Jasper introduced me to all these names and gave me some good recordings that were helpful to me and also he gave me an...

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