Recording an album is an exercise in itself, totally
different from a concert, in which the musicians are galvanised by the
audience’s presence. It is important to create comfortable surroundings
in order to make music for a virtual audience, which will listen to us
later, in rush hour traffic, or under the covers, with headphones on
their ears.
We chose Bern Cathedral as much for its German Kuhn organ as for the
particular atmosphere of its loft: one feels rather at home there, as in
one’s sitting rom. However, the lavish sound of the organ reminds us
that we are in a cathedral.
In order to start a recording, one must first place the microphones;
this determines where our virtual audience’s “ears” are. In order to
take advantage of the textures of the percussion and the organ, we
deployed a forest of microphones which are close to the pipes and
capture all the acoustic breadth of this impressive instrument. Thus we
were able to play Mozart as if we were making chamber music, in which
every detail counts. The organ, a small miracle of entirely Swiss
mechanical and acoustic precision, was effortless to master, and became
the zealous servant of our musical urges, from the gentlest caress to
the wildest shouts. Even the Vox Humana pipes (a register which imitates
the human voice) were willingly tuned to match the keys of the
apartment belonging to Elie, who kindly hosted us during our stay.
Every day, the great 32-foot wooden C# (the organ’s lowest-pitched
pipe, 10 metres high) welcomed us from above the staircase leading to
the loft. Its placid, benevolent gaze, hidden behind its century-old
screws, gave us the confidence to face the small musical difficulties
that awaited us.
And so, over two evenings, we made a little night music, thanks to Mozart and Haydn, under a Gothic nave, in the shadow of an 18th century
wooden and gold facade, surrounded by state-of-the-art equipment,
sensitive to the faintest sound. A moment outside of time, alone with
ourselves, and yet connected to everyone who will one day listen to us.
Sometimes when the castanets were unleashed in the middle of a sonata for piano, we asked Wolfgang Amadeus for forgiveness, imagining that he
would have had a good laugh if he had been there.
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