229: Christophe Rousset on Lully, Mozart, and playing with rules

Christophe Rousset is a harpsichordist, conductor, and founder of Les Talens Lyriques. In this conversation, recorded in Paris, he talks about completing his twenty-year project to record all thirteen of Lully's operas — a composer long dismissed as boring, and why that dismissal gets the history wrong.We also discuss the young Mozart as musical sponge, absorbing Jommelli and Gassmann before finding his own voice; the Amadeus problem and what it gets wrong about Salieri; the relationship between scholarly knowledge and artistic intuition; and the kind of authority a conductor holds — total in theory, useless if exercised clumsily.The closing distinction Rousset draws — between playing with rules and breaking them — turns out to be the most revealing thing he says.In this episodeWhy comparing Lully to Rameau is a category errorHow a twenty-year recording project accumulates rather than gets plannedThe young Mozart's debts to Jommelli and GassmannScholarliness versus intuition in the rehearsal roomPower, charm, and persuasion as a conductor"Playing with the rules" as a governing philosophy** SUBSCRIBER EDITION EPISODE **The Aldeburgh Festival subscriber edition is available via the podcast feeds on Spotify or Apple, and via the the Thoroughly Good Blog. £2.99 a month to get early access to this and future episodes. Subscribe now.