Curiosamente tínhamos falado do grande mestre num dos primeiros posts deste blog ainda em 2007. Com alguns erros à mistura salientados por um dos leitores com outros que passaram incólumes não deixávamos de salientar um dos seus grandes legados: A recuperação de uma perspectiva de época e a integral das cantatas de Bach que gravou com Hannoncourt entre 1971 e 1990.
Assim no que me diz respeito prefiro de longe salientar a sensibilidade musical ímpar que transcende a discussão académica sobre o interesse ou primazia das interpretações de época sobre as restantes. E prefiro-o, embora Gustav Leonhardt não concordasse comigo de certeza, porque acho que as suas interpretações têm valor muito para além dessa dimensão de análise. Curiosamente uma vez o maestro disse: "Se um músico parecer convincente vai parece autêntico por outro lado se procurar ser autêntico dificilmente vai convencer ..."
O estilo de Leonhardt caracterizava-se essencialmente por uma enorme sobriedade, as vezes até criticado por ser demasiado cerebral demasiado frio, pensamos que se confunde a verbalização em folclore gestual com a verdadeira emoção que decorria da forma como pressionava as teclas e nos fazia percorrer a sua musica interior.
Numa entrevista o músico explicou como tinha começado a gostar de cravo:
Initially I was not drawn to the harpsichord - I was faced with it! When I was about ten-years-old, before World War II, my parents, who were not musicians, but were great music lovers, used to play a lot of chamber music with my brother and sister. Almost every night we would play music. Extraordinarily for amateurs at that time, my parents thought that since they sometimes played Telemann and Bach, they should have a harpsichord. So they ordered one, and since I was usually the keyboard man I was put on the harpsichord and played my written-out continuo part - badly, I’m sure, although I don’t now remember much about it. Then during the last year of the War everything in Holland stopped; there was no electricity, no water and we had to hide from the Germans. School was also stopped, which was marvellous for me, the best thing about a year when unimaginable horrors were going on elsewhere in Holland. Our house was in the countryside, so although we were not eating well, we were not suffering the hunger endured by those in the cities. It was then I started to look at our harpsichord with fresh eyes. I became absolutely fascinated by it and started regulating and tuning it all day long. It was then that I developed my desire to be a musician and devote myself to Bach, albeit in a rather naive way. After the War, I told my parents of my wishes, but they wisely made me finish my schooling. My father was a businessman and expected me to go into the business as a director, but my parents were also very liberal and agreed to let me study music. That was in 1947. At that time there was only one institute in Europe where you could study seriously the kind of music I was interested in. That was the Schola Cantorum in Basel, which of course remains today one of the foremost institutes. So I went to Basel for three years, and there laid the foundations for what happened later.
A entrevista (aliás notável) pode ser lida totalmente aqui. Professor notável (penso que dos cravistas actuais haverá poucos que não tenham de alguma forma aprendido com Gustav) não podemos deixar de mencionar também a sua contribuição enquanto musicólogo no estudo de alguns compositores que tinham sido quase totalmente ignorados ou mal entendidos.
Para ilustrar com música este post deixamo-vos com o ultimo concerto deste cravista excepcional que podem ouvir e ver no You Tube no passado dia 12 de Novembro. Escrevo aliás este post ao som desse concerto ... Estou seguro que descansará em paz, a mesma paz lúcida e luminosa que transparece neste vídeo.
Gustav Leonhardt Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord em Paris a 12 de Dezembro de 2011.
