Diego Cantalupi is arguably one of the most important performers of Baroque music in our time. He plays the lute and manages to keep the spirit of the Baroque era alive through his interpretations. Besides being a performer, he is also a significant educator who works in Italy and performs concerts worldwide.
Q: Hello Diego, to begin the interview, we would like to get to know more about you. Could you tell us something about yourself?
A: I Prelude all sorts of roles we generally say load but means load your arsenal Baroque guitar, because the stones changed during the age and in different countries. So we have to, when you say we play lute, we must admit we play a lot of different sorts. And I began playing guitar, classical guitar, then I moved on these instruments, much were much more attractive for me, But, because there’s a lot of very good and interesting solid music. But mainly because you can play bass a continuum. So we can a campaign from a soloist, singer or instrumentalist to large orchestra.
Q: Are you currently working on a project that you would like to present?
A: So there is a series coming out in hope, not later than November I just finished the last edit . So it’s just working on the graphic part. It’s a sort of let’s say in fiction Musicology, because Silvius Leopold Weiss that was the most famous lute player in the German and Polish era during the late Baroque. It’s known that he met young Sebastian Bach in Yasumasa house in Leipzig, and a lot of chronicle that say that they play together and they make sort of was the better to improvise and to play fields. And of course, we don’t have the music of this meeting. And I try to reconstruct it with the reports a friend who plays harpsichord, so we made this interesting. The title is him Bauhaus. And that means meeting in the house and try to understand what they played together. It should be out in November.
Q: Good luck with this So how do you think the public see Baroque music or Baroque instrument? You play a lute is not a very used instrument today. It’s rare.
A: Yeah, of course, let’s say Baroque music, It’s of course, I think, sometimes easier for public to understand that, you know, a concert like this one repaid it’s seven minutes of Beethoven symphony, it’s 30. So much better to keep attention on a short time. Sometimes, it’s very technical music, so it’s quite accurately for them. And of course, I win easily because the actual It’s just strange that usually people at the end of the concert comes because they want to see the instrument. It’s a very strange instrument, I think, not only here in Romania, usually, that’s something that catches the attention of people because it’s an instrument that than not used to see quite often. And also, I must say, this is very short instrument. Usually, they are much, much longer, so much more accurate. And it was built in Romania.
Q: You talk about recording, you think it’s important to promote on the online platform ? Do you believe that this helps you become more visible to your audience?
Yes, Today, this aspect is importan. When I began my my career, of course, recording was something you had to do. I made, I think, something like 150 recordings, many recordings. Now, its distribution is very strange. Because the last recording I made before this one, I gave the CD to the people, and I hadn’t any any input from them. And when he said, Did you hear him? He said, No, I don’t have a CD player. So now of course, sometimes it’s more important to make a video promoting your CD that sometimes it’s not a CD, it’s just a virtual CD Project. It’s much more interesting and much more useful to make a video than to make a CD. And of course, social are something that you can’t avoid nowadays.
Q: For the young musicians, do you have a device? Is there something important for young musicians to consider if they want to perform this type of music?
A: Yes, I think it’s something that make your mind completely different. Making usual classical music, playing together, being with other people being ready to accept the decision or try to impose your decision. It’s something that is always very good. And of course, it’s very nice to make music together. So it’s something that should be I don’t know how many any day now, classical music, it’s any more thought in the school almost. It’s very hard to do. Find young people interested in classical music because the young generation of parents don’t listen classical music. They don’t listen in school. So they almost don’t do that classical music disease. But, of course, it’s a tradition we can live Gulgong going away, you know, it’ very, very important. I think in the beginning, there are in essence, you know, that there was this, it was one of the things that young people had to study, like Mathematica and music, music was no wonder this.
Q: What should a musician consider in order to attract more audience to concert halls?
A: I speak about classical music. We just need to play very well, and very nice pieces of music. So from the musician point of view, I think that sometimes we made programmes that are very interesting for us, but not for goobric. And that’s too much. And some other times we choose programme that are very easy to listen, sometimes, I think, also things because we are quite free in early music. So why don’t to add some percussion, why not to add something that make the music more interesting. And also, this one is not very good, because it’s like, you give sugar to a baby and then everything must be sugared. So we must find a good balance in playing very seriously very well finding a programme that is attractive for public and not only for us, so that’s the main street I think we have to look for.
