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The organ is quite a treacherous instrument.

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Unorthodoxy of approach to the performance of music of earlier and more recent epochs, imagination and passion, all characterise the organist and harpsichordist Jaroslav Tuma (*1956). His approach to music is comprehensive: he not only records and gives concerts but writes his own accompanying texts for his albums, and has a gift for communicating his favourite themes in words to radio listeners and television viewers. He has played the organ since early childhood, and later expanded his instrumental repertoire to include other historic keyboard instruments.

You come from Caslav, and your father was a minister of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. What influence has this had on you, musically and otherwise?

I will answer with a memory from my years at the conservatory, when on one occasion my teacher Jan Hora (we are now colleagues at the Music Faculty of the Prague Academy of Performing Arts) told me, "Jarda, on the one hand you were lucky in the circumstances of your birth, and on the other hand unlucky". It was obvious what he meant. Under the prevailing political conditions it was difficult for me to get to high school, let alone the academy, but on the other hand I had a better chance than most even in the course of my studies to get to play the organ, not only in the Hussite Church, but with the Catholics and Protestants. You see, at that time ecumenical relations worked far better than today when the churches are to some extent in competition. Although of course today I already have plenty of friends in different communities, and so the fact that the situation is worse now as far as access to organs is concerned is something that affects young organists at the start of their careers rather than me. Every so often I hear them complain about people being unwilling to let them play some instrument. My family background had a fundamental influence above all in ensuring that I began to play the organ at all. It was natural for me to be in the church every Sunday and by the organ--my mother used to play it.

What first grabbed you about the organ? The sound or the technical side of the instrument?

At the end of basic school I wasn't terribly interested in school as such, but I was crazy about the organ. You should realise that the organ has a fascination for a lot of people, then and now, but organ enthusiasts tend to have very different perspectives--for example some are interested in the organ as a technical thing, as an exotic instrument where every exemplar is different. Others get their kicks out of documenting the instruments, recording the various dispositions, and taking an interest mainly in the historical aspect, for example. What is bad, is when some individuals are hell-bent on adapting the instrument they possess in line with their own ideas and interests. There are some amateur enthusiasts who have no qualms about changing the whole pipe order regardless of the original design of the instrument. Those people are organ destroyers.

The organ has always interested me first and foremost as an instrument on which I can make music. The first impression is usually of the overwhelming principal sound of the instrument in its full majesty. Almost everyone is initially bowled over. But real interest in the instrument's acoustic flexibility and diversity tends to be confined to a rather narrowly specialised public.

Of organ composers it has been Johann Sebastian Bach who most attracted me from the very beginning. Over the years I have mastered his entire organ oeuvre and performed it in twenty-one concert programmes.

When did you make your first public appearance as an organist?

I had my first public recital as an organist as a fourteen-year-old in the Hussite Church in Caslav. Even before I auditioned for the Conservatory. I had been playing at church services for a long time before.

How did you get to the conservatory?

It was Stanislav Mach who prepared me for the conservatory. I had to play the piano for the auditions, since even today conservatories do not expect candidates to have any substantial experience of playing the organ. The conservatory tested capacity for improvisation, ear and many other similar things. Seven people had applied and there was only one place. In the end they took two of us. It was a paradox of the time that while during my seven years at the conservatory I took part in international competitions and even won prizes, when I applied to AMU (the Music Faculty of the Prague Academy of Performing Arts), there was once again a problem about whether I could be admitted or not. I was lucky, because at the conservatory I was supposed to be in Professor Jaroslav Vodrazka's class and at AMU in Professor Milan Slechta's and both of them wanted me. I remember the story that Director Mach later told me about it. He didn't just concern himself with preparing me for...

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