Bogdan Nesterenko - Juliette de Massy

Bach...

The composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who was also a virtuoso instrumentalist (harpsichord, organ, violin), complained all his life about bad instruments and poor performers, and was always on the lookout for talent. He asked the tenor of the choir to replace the failing first violin, but then he ran out of tenors.

At the age of eighteen, we see him taking out his sword in the street to defend himself from an execrable bassoonist whom he had called an "old goat" at rehearsal, and who was waiting for him in the street with a stick... Three years before his death, when he was received by Frederick II, he rushed to Silbermann's pianoforte, conquered by their possibilities, on which he improvised magnificent fugues on themes that were given to him at the time, and which would give birth to the Musical Offering. It is therefore easy to imagine Bach discovering the accordion and its immense possibilities: its flexible and limitless dynamics, in direct contact with the bellows, capable of reproducing all the dynamics and the slightest phrasing, like a human voice, its registers, comparable to those of the organ, the virtuosity it allows, with its sophisticated palette of buttons, and its extreme manoeuvrability, that of a portable organ. Of course, he would also have foreseen its limitations, induced by an equal right/left hand dynamic, but would have guessed that this could be compensated by the skill of the performer. The sanguine Bach would therefore perhaps have pushed Bogdan Nesterenko a little to take his place and try out this incredible new instrument. But in spite of his prodigious gifts, he would probably have quickly returned it to its owner, after having noticed the extreme difficulty and specificity of the practice! The fortunate chance of life brought me into contact with Juliette de Massy, whose first steps as a soprano I had the privilege of guiding, and the accordionist Bogdan Nesterenko.

So it was only natural that the idea came to me to bring together these two unique young talents in the ambitious project Comme un air de passions...

Maurice Bourbon