I’m really happy to throw that gauntlet down. The first thing is that I’m slightly bored with the early music movement when one comes to the sort of people—and I’m not being ageist, because there are people of that generation who are still dynamic—who’ve been involved for twenty-five years, but haven’t really thought it through. They are so self-satisfied and smug, sitting there with cellos with spikes playing on half-modern instruments, with half-modern bows. Or there are the really comfortable, plush choirs of the Eliot Gardiner or Herreweghe school, which are all very well—I’m not in any sense making a pejorative comment about musicianship—but which are so often used without any questioning of their suitability for the repertoire to be performed.

I have such respect for those with passion and conviction, even if what they do is diametrically opposed to how I feel about the music. What I’m really tired of is this endless stream of European groups hacking their way round without displaying any real personality. That’s not good for music making of any kind.

And the other thing I’d like to say is that I’m sometimes depressed by the lack of musical interest and commitment from a lot of directors in the early music business. It seems to me that there are not enough people who are really passionate or musical enough in terms of the way they perform. I know it’s a matter of taste, but if you ask me about the people I most like, they are often people I most dislike, if you know what I mean. I have such respect for those with passion and conviction, even if what they do is diametrically opposed to how I feel about the music. What I’m really tired of is this endless stream of European groups hacking their way round without displaying any real personality. That’s not good for music making of any kind.

We should really try to clean up our act, go for higher stakes. Let’s try to do some serious work on instrumentation, let’s play on all gut strings, let’s think about historical bowing techniques, let’s perhaps start playing on the arm and not on the shoulder. Let’s start thinking seriously about historical organs in the context of our work. Let’s think more seriously about vocal techniques and resources. Let’s use better editions. There are so many things that we could be doing that we’re not doing.

And I’m not being holier than thou, because there are many things I wish we could do in Gabrieli, but which we can’t in the practical way in which we work. We have tried to raise the game, but we can’t do it all the time. Sometimes we fail, but we must be prepared to try. And that’s what I mean about being serious—being free, being passionate, being expressive. If you’d sat in on the rehearsal of Saul last night you’d have been amazed at the detail with which this orchestra works on such matters of bowing technique, which is relatively rare even in England, because there aren’t enough conductors with a string-playing background. But at the same time I suspect that my natural musicianship is going to express itself in ways that push the boundaries of Baroque practice.

By pushing the boundaries, do you mean technically?

No, I mean in the expressive way we play. There is a paradox here. On the one hand we have to keep pushing further back, but in another way we have to be more modern in the way we express ourselves. To give one very simple example, in the St. Matthew Passion when you hear the shout of “Barrabam”, the startling dissonance of that diminished seventh chord would subconsciously have knocked a Bach congregation flat, but today, when you’ve heard Mendelssohn and Brahms that chord is so debased in our ears that the shock will never be there. So you do have to be prepared to gild the lily to get the authenticity of surprise. And that’s the eternal paradox that we can never really get to the bottom of. In a way it helps us to be more authentic, but in another way it can never be the same because it makes us realise that musical vocabulary has changed.

Let’s go back to the early part of your career. You’ve already mentioned that you started your musical life as a string player, a cellist. How did you then go on to form Gabrieli?