I haven’t really worked on early gesture for the moment. Perhaps because what I’ve seen of it hasn’t been very convincing! But that’s a matter of taste. On the other hand, when you watch singers like Lucilla Galeazzi, Marco Beasley and Pino de Vittorio, you see that gesture is an integral part of their language. It’s a completely natural element for them; they use gesture often, and move around a lot on stage. Standing immobile next to a piano would be unthinkable for them! Up to now, the singers I’ve chosen have quite simply brought this ability with them.

Your recordings show a strong desire to establish a link with traditional music. What do you think traditional music brings to early music?

Traditional music had an enormous influence on composition in the seventeenth century. This is something that has intrigued me a lot, and I believe we have a tremendous amount to learn from this repertoire. If you look at a classical Villanella, a Ciaccona or La Folia, you realise that the last two are South American dances that came to Spain - via Portugal - and to Naples, and became part of the Italian musical landscape. They had a profound influence on Italian vocal and instrumental music, and became completely integrated into the musical language of the eighteenth century. The most interesting thing is to observe how these styles have survived up to the present day. It’s truly fascinating that certain musicians still play according to this tradition, this facet of early music.

Have you tried to make contact with these musicians?

Yes, particularly when we were making our Tarantella recording. We wanted to mix baroque musicians, with all the instrumental colours that are described in seventeenth-century descriptions of the Tarantella, with guest musicians who have had absolutely no classical training, like Alfio Antico. He carries about four hundred years of tradition around with him!

He can’t read music, but when the rest of us, with our conservatory training, heard what he can do with rhythm, we realised our rhythmic training was nowhere near as sophisticated as his! Alfio is Sicilian, and has mastered an extremely complex art. His music-making is part of the polyrhythmic art that Sicilians know backwards and forwards.