Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Giovanni Antonini

As a boy, Giovanni’s parents wanted to enrol him in the preparatory department of the Milan Conservatoire. According to the school, their son was too high-spirited, and he was not admitted as a violin student, but he soon more than made up for their disappointment. He studied the recorder, and while still a student, he joined with the lute player Luca Pianca in establishing Il Giardino Armonico—an ensemble that has won worldwide renown over its 40 years of existence in the field of the informed interpretation of early music.

Since 2014, Antonini and the ensemble have been working on the project Haydn 2032, presented by the Joseph Haydn Foundation in Basel. The goal is to record all 107 of the composer’s symphonies by his 200th birthday, for the first time on period instruments and on the basis of the latest research on how his works were originally interpreted.

However, Antonini’s knowledge does not hinder his unorthodox approach to music: “We can benefit from the fact that there no longer exists a ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’ orchestral sound or a single period instrument sound because there are also many of them. There is yet a third possibility—not only a musical, but also a human encounter between two worlds that create something new. It depends on the chemistry that can be created between the conductor and the orchestra”, he explains.

“My approach oscillates between that of a classic conductor when I give a composition’s tempo and lead it, but it is also important for me to give the players responsibility. I don’t want them to submit to my gestures, but instead to listen. When someone plays Bach unusually, it enriches my musical panorama. The meaning of music is to bring pleasure to listeners and musicians”, says Antonini, according to whom classical music has nothing to hide, especially the older music. In scores like those by Haydn or Vivaldi without many instructions, one has to discover lots of things, and that puts great demands on performers’ imagination.

Antonini speaks jokingly about the recorder being his toy: “On the one hand, playing it can be very easy: you blow, and a sound comes out. It gives you a feeling of deep satisfaction and is very relaxing. I would compare working with your breath this way to yoga. There almost isn’t any resistance in it, and the air flows naturally. When I’m tired after a rehearsal and play for about half an hour in my room, it’s very relaxing.”