William Christie - Cultivating Emotion (Book)

Interviews with Emmanuel Resche-Caserta - Actes Sud - September 2021

Harpsichordist, conductor, teacher, garden art enthusiast, member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, William Christie, an American living in France since 1971, is the architect of one of the most remarkable musical adventures of the last forty years. In 2018, he created the Les Arts Florissants-William Christie foundation, dedicated to the transmission of baroque music and gardens. He reveals himself in a series of unpublished interviews that he entrusted to his young first violin, Emmanuel Resche-Caserta, to conduct and write. Far from being a review, this book is rather a touching portrait, born from a free conversation about music, the arts and life, between the conductor and his second, separated by two generations but closely linked by a sincere friendship and mutual trust.
Together they discuss the aesthetics, questions and career of the Franco-American conductor, from his childhood in the United States, through the legendary Atys, to the challenges that excite William Christie today, over the course of the six months of tour retraced in this logbook, from New York to Venice, via London, Zaragoza, Paris and Thiré, in the daily life and intimacy of the founder of Les Arts Florissants.