Interview

Jean-Claude Casadesus is known in France as the man who introduced classical music to prisons, factories and psychiatric hospitals. There is of course much more to him than that. The son of the actress Gisèle Casadesus, Jean-Claude comes from a long line of performers and for more than 40 years has conducted orchestras around all four corners of the globe. In France he created the National Orchestra of Lille. He has also been musical director at the Châtelet Theatre, and chief conductor at the Paris Opera. Early on in his career he began asking questions about the role of the artist in society. On the wall of his apartment building in Paris, a plaque recalls his grandfather, the musician Henri Casadesus. “Yes, art is elitist – but it an elitism of the heart,” says Jean-Claude, who at 74 has the physique of a much younger man. Obviously generosity is good for you. As he says in the title of his autobiography, music is “The shortest route from one heart to another.”

What was it that led you first to performing in prisons?

Back in 1975, I was in a taxi going to the Paris Opera and the driver asked me what was my profession. When I told him it was classical music, he said: “Well, that’s not for the likes of us.” There and then, I made a vow that one day it would be for the likes of him. My ambition has always been to make music part of the daily life of ordinary people, just like the written word is. The wonderful thing about music – if you’re lucky enough to be on the receiving end — is that the emotion puts everyone on the same level. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, you’re all on the same magic planet.

How did you put your ambition into action?

At the time I was director of the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Loire Valley region in Nantes. Michel Guy, who was culture minister, asked me if I would like to take over the Orchestra of the Nord Pas-de-Calais region. In fact the orchestra was being wound down because of the recentralisation of the state radio network to Paris, and my job was to terminate its contract! The north of France had a rich tradition of brass and woodwinds, but there was no symphonic tradition. It just didn’t have the structure for it. The region had four million inhabitants, and statistically the population was the youngest in France. But there was also a lot of unemployment and crime. Huge chunks of industries like textiles and steel had just collapsed. So when I began setting up the National Orchestra of Lille in the mid 1970s, my aim was to bring music out to wherever people would listen.

Where did you perform?

We rehearsed in the city’s main seminary. The building was disused, and there was plenty of space. We also rehearsed in the Sebastopol theatre. Lille also had an operetta theatre. It was a bit like the Wild West. The Nord Pas-de-Calais regional council had only just come into existence. I remember our first concert. There were 57 musicians on the stage, and 51 people in the audience! We played where we could: in marquees, theatres, public halls, sports halls, churches. Slowly but steadily, more venues became available.

What are the main requirements for starting an orchestra?

You need plenty of energy, talented musicians, the support of sponsors – and then you just roll up your sleeves and get to work. A successful orchestra depends on top-quality instrumentalists but also on a shared inspiration. There has to be complete understanding between musicians and conductor, and the conductor cannot play the tyrant. He is just one of a team whose job is making music.

Your aim has been to bring the orchestra closer to the public.

Yes, my aim was to go out to parts of the population that have traditionally been barred from access to music. I have gone out to hospitals, and to factories – like our performance of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé to 3,000 employees at the 3 Suisses warehouse – and prisons. In 1991 I contacted the people in charge at the local penitentiaries at Loos and Sequedin. I did it as part of a wider initiative, which was a way of answering the question: what is the role, the purpose, of an artist in society? For me the answer is to transmit, to give sustenance to the music-lovers of tomorrow, and to provide solace, dreams, happiness. So the concerts are not just experiments. I perform with exactly the same degree of respect for all my audiences. And it was only when the Lille orchestra had become fully established – performances in 30 countries and 230 local towns, 200,000 tickets sold, 5,000 season-ticket holders – that I started to develop this original idea.

Staging concerts in prison was not an entirely new idea.

Well, when it comes to classical music, I am not so sure. In Italy Claudio Abbado and Maurizio Pollini had visited jails. In France there had been actors, popular singers, even chamber groups. But I think we were the first symphony orchestra. At the start, back in 1991, the prison staff were not exactly enthusiastic. We were disrupting their routine. In prisons, they are used to things running like clockwork. But eventually the idea began to make headway, and the messages of support that I began to receive convinced me that the concerts were serving some purpose.

Do you remember how you felt the first time you performed in a prison?

The first concert was in a carpentry workshop. Definitely not a concert hall. There were work-benches and tools everywhere. But actually the sound quality was not bad at all. They acted like they thought we were complete nut-cases, and of course there were cat-calls when the ladies came in. It’s always like that. But then things calm down. The cell doors open. Loos is an old prison, but curiously it is a lot more human than some of these modern places that are straight out of George Orwell.

Do you appear in tails?

Yes, in full concert outfit. Some of the prisoners said to me: “You’ve shown us respect. You didn’t come in jeans.” We rehearse in ordinary clothes, but we treat the concert like we would in any top-class venue.

What do you perform?

We do two concerts per year – one for men and one for women. We don’t want to dumb down, so we play items from the traditional repertoire. Not necessarily the hardest of music to appreciate, but not the easiest either. Bizet, Ravel, Wagner, Mussorgski’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Beethoven, Prokofiev.

Art is often described as a way of transcending suffering. In that sense, does it have a resonance among these new audiences?

It was Georges Braque who said that “art is a wound turned into light.” When we give our concerts, I usually introduce the works on offer – though I try not to talk for too long. One time, I got a lot of laughs with Berlioz’s La Symphonie fantastique. It’s a kind of self-portrait about a man who’s hopelessly in love with an unattainable women, so he takes an overdose of opium. The prisoners were really spellbound. Then I said, “And remember, Berlioz was a great composer – and he pulled through.” Music is governed by rules. A triplet is not a semiquaver. There are beats and bars. You have to get over these constraints. And the prison world is a bit like that. It’s a life-path too. You have to rise above it. And even the most destitute person in the world still retains his personal dignity. After the concerts I receive all sorts of reactions. People say things like, “I understand classical music better now. The sadness, the anger – it was so powerful.” Or, “It’s like what the bloke said – it’s magic. It made me shudder. It was amazing. You could forget for a minute that you are in prison. I could see other faces. Otherwise one has the feeling that every day in prison is exactly the same.” Or, “You can forget the prison, you can forget all of that. While the concert was going on, I forgot everything.” It really is tangible. It’s like a door which opens the way to this immense sense of hope. I always remember that quotation of André Malraux: “One is tempted to hope that the word art can give to people the sense of greatness they do not realise lies within themselves.”

Do you think that the separation you mentioned between music and audience has been narrowed with time? Or are there still places where beauty remains inaccessible?

Oh yes, there are still too many places where access is barred. I think beauty must come before utility. For artists it’s a question of survival. Artists have to appreciate the importance of sharing, not with the privileged classes, but with the people who say like my taxi-driver: “It’s not for me.” We live in a cruel world. Every day we read of more ghastliness. So what gives the artist legitimacy? It’s the quality of his art, and his willingness to share it. An artist can judge his impact by the quality of the silence. One of the first workers’ concerts we gave was at the Renault factory in Douai. There we were among all the greasers and the packers and all the different machines. They looked at us like we were completely alien, and then they watched us rehearse. These people were from a closed society and their working ethic was completely divorced from this kind of personal enjoyment. But gradually you could see the respect. They could detect that this was something of real value. They communicated their respect almost imperceptibly. Like when someone looks you in the eyes, you know straight away who you are dealing with. I find the same reaction when we perform before children.

Indeed – tell us more about that experience.

Several years ago I got involved with an initiative to introduce works of music to young audiences. Since 1992 we’ve been in partnership with the Michelet school in Roubaix. The orchestra goes out to different schools. We’ve done it at five lycées, in Arras, Dunkirk and so on. Also every year I bring young people together with our composers-in-residence during an eight-day festival which we put on. We get the youngsters to express their sonic universe. It could be by banging on the table or singing or even flatulence! It’s all taken down then re-worked. Either they work on the music themselves in a group, or they give instructions to a composer. They work on the pieces over the school year with their teachers, and then at the festival they are actually performed. The children rehearse in the hall or on stage, along with the composers. They see what it is like backstage. The festival is a kind of open-doors experience with choral workshops, and Suzuki method workshops, and musicians who present their instruments and their CDs. My job is to try to share my passion. We have 200 different classes involved in our Classivores iprogramme. That means 15,000 pupils, many of them from so-called difficult neighbourhoods. I see it as like a church, in the Greek sense of the term (ekklesia meant an assembly of citizens), built around respect and values. The aim is to awaken a desire and to help its realisation. At school they tell you to start over again 100 times till you get it right. It kills all desire. On stage they see musicians coming face to face with the same kind of difficulty. It’s the same way of teaching via mistakes. But on stage, it has another dimension. There they can see that pleasure can only be achieved via discipline. Then later these children become parents and bring their own children to the concerts. Some 20 percent of our season-ticket holders are parents who got to know the orchestra when they were small children.

Music can also be a social ladder.

There is no conflict in music. It is totally ecumenical. Take the three cultures festival at Essouira in Morocco which unites Jewish, Muslim and Christian musicians, all singing together. Barenboim has done something similar with the Diwan orchestra. And here in the Nord Pas-de-Calais, even if our work amounts to just a few drops in a sea of problems – it still has an effect. I have known youngsters – real hooligans – who have discovered Rostropovich and gone on to graduate at Sciences-Po or business school. Music brought them back to education. It’s like the way a Strauss waltz can make an autistic child smile. Music has therapeutic properties which we still do not really understand. It’s irrational. As Cocteau said: “Since we cannot comprehend the mysteries, let us pretend we are organising them.”

As for you personally, you are from a family of artists – where did this humanist dimension spring from?

I do not know, but probably from the love that my parents gave me. They were actors. When I was four, my grandfather placed a violin in my hands. He was rehearsing in the room with his brothers and sisters. Then later I in my turn became part of an orchestra. I have been through all different kinds of music. I have been lucky enough to accompany some very great classical artists, but also Brel, Brassens, Aznavour, Qunicy Jones. Always it was for a privileged audience. From behind my kettle-drums at the Colonne Orchestra, it was always the same kind of public that I looked out on. Coming up north was my great opportunity. My political awareness – again the Greek sense of politics as the life of citizens – was awakened by my contact with the suffering of those around me.

Your daughter, the opera singer Caroline Casadesus, is taking part in the Concerts de poche initiative – giving classical concerts for the cost of a cinema ticket. Does music have a price?

I do not think it is something that can be given away free. That’s belittling to the artists, and means that no effort is required on the part of the public. The Lille orchestra lives on subsidies. Giving our concerts free would be an abuse of public money. We may not be able to provide singers of the quality of Jessye Norman, but with the money at our disposal we can offer the beauty of a good performance. So is there a price? No, music does not have a price, but public bodies have to adjust to their means. Ten euros may not buy you a Mouton Rothschild 1947, but you’ll get a perfectly good second-tier wine.