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As violinist Rachel Podger releases her new album of early English music, Mark Seow meets her to reminisce, discover what she has planned for the future – and find out what lies behind her ever-exploring spirit
On a Monday at 7.30pm, Rachel Podger walks into the foyer of the Royal Academy of Music, London. She lugs a suitcase, carries bags that seem to multiply in number and, of course, has her violin flung across her shoulder. The reason for the luggage, Podger explains, is that she’s had to pack for climates other than her beloved Wales. Her schedule for the next few days, I abstain from remarking, is crazy. Tomorrow morning, she’ll teach her students at the academy, where she holds the Micaela Comberti Chair of Baroque Violin. In the afternoon, she’ll perform on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune to promote the last of her concerts at King’s Place as their Artist in Focus. That takes us to Friday. Before the week’s close, she’s off to Iceland. Last year marked the 20th anniversary of her recording of Vivaldi’s La Stravaganza with the ensemble Arte dei Suonatori. They’re celebrating with a concert at the Reykjavik Early Music Festival (Podger’s even sneaking in a masterclass for good measure). I’m exhausted thinking about this series of events; Podger remains unfazed – buoyant, even. We’ve met to talk about her new release, but before I can shoot her a question, she grills me on what I’m up to. It’s typical of this violinist: despite her time spent in the solo limelight, she seems remarkably uninterested in herself.
Last year, Podger performed her recital album ‘Tutta Sola’ 15 times in Scotland and the north of England; that disc was a finalist in the Instrumental category of the 2023 Gramophone Awards. ‘“Don’t you get lonely?” I get that question a lot,’ she tells me. Her answer? ‘“Well, no. There’s a lot going on, there’s not just me there: there’s a communing with the actual composer all the time – there’s a conversation there, all the time. I’m also having a conversation with you, the audience; whether you like it or not!”’
Communication and collaboration are at the heart of her new album, ‘The Muses Restor’d’, which charts the transition from early consort music of the Jacobean era to the fully fledged, emancipated instrumental sonata of the Georgian period. Podger is joined by Marcin ´Swiatkiewicz on keyboards, cellist Felix Knecht, Reiko Ichise on six-stringed bass viol, and Elizabeth Kenny – who brings her vanload of plucked instruments to the show. The flexible ensemble of Brecon Baroque is perfectly suited to capturing the variety of this broad period. There’s the ‘quiet joy’ of Locke and Lawes, whispers Podger, as if the very act of saying this might steal its magic. ‘You’ve got to be a different musician. It’s very, very intimate music-making. You’re not being accompanied: you’re all equal parts. It’s so refreshing and enjoyable not to be the “leader”, always up front being “trailblazing” – which is very enjoyable, too, but it’s quite nice to have a change. Just being a part, a spoke in a wheel – I love that.’ While Podger affectionately describes how music of the English Baroque, particularly Purcell, is never far from her consciousness, she also relishes how it doesn’t sit quite so comfortably. ‘I think timing is a very different thing in that repertoire. The structure in Italian music – the sense of the rhythm that the harmony gives you – is so, so clear.
But this slightly idiosyncratic music, especially in the case of John Jenkins – is that really what he meant to do? Often it seems out of place and shocking! I think it probably was, even at the time. It’s such bizarre writing.’
The disc also has the fireworks we’ve come to expect from the Baroque virtuoso who was crowned Gramophone Artist of the Year in 2018. ‘I discovered these wonderful airs by Richard Jones – not the most noteworthy name, but he must have been a wonderful violinist.’ Podger describes the flamboyance of some of the movements, which she interprets as a sure sign of Jones’s work in London’s theatres. She had initially thought that the album would be structured chronologically; however, other narratives soon emerged. She became more concerned with the final order grabbing and sustaining the attention of a listener. ‘You have to have a contrasting narrative throughout the album; I still believe that, even though people stream and just listen to single tracks.’ While it’s not Podger’s first time recording early English music (an album of Locke, Blow, Baltzar and others with the Palladian Ensemble, entitled ‘A Choice Collection’, was recorded in 1995), she admits that it has been quite some time since she did. For some of the tracks in particular, she was like a duck to water – except Podger reaches for a different water-based analogy. ‘It just flowed,’ she says of her performance with Kenny of the Lachrimae by Johann Schop. The pavan is better known in its lute song version, Flow, my tears, from The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres (1600) by John Dowland. ‘We didn’t really rehearse it. We just kind of did it. We didn’t talk about anything, explain anything – it was just one of those things. It was a lovely meeting.’ I push Podger a bit further on this point: while for some, the term ‘flow’ clearly refers to the psychology of Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, for others it can smell somewhat of surfboard wax, or drip hippy-dippy. ‘With me, personally, it’s acute listening and creating in the moment; being open to any possibilities within that framework – because you know what the framework is, you know what the music is doing. It’s like playing hide and seek, like having an amazing conversation.
But it’s not superficial; it’s a real meeting. All the time you might be looking for other possibles – you’re just aware that you could go there; but if you’re both kind of streaming, following one flow, then that’s how it’s going to be. You just leave those possibles, and that’s fine. And then the next take will be completely different.’
I point to the stress this spontaneity must cause for recording engineer Jared Sacks and producer Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, her longtime collaborators. Podger laughs and rocks in her chair, her head of thick flame-coloured hair – just as much her signature as the warm gut-string sound she produces on her Pesarini/Pazarini (or Pesarinius) violin made in 1739 – momentarily morphing into a wild animal. ‘You’re just so alert in that moment. I always feel slightly feverish in a recording session; I love it, it’s so addictive.’
Such feverish levels of intensity have been there since the beginning of Podger’s solo career. She describes a moment during her residency at Banff in the late 1990s when something else took over. ‘I literally had an out-of-body experience. It’s a bit cheesy, but it’s true – I saw myself, as I was playing. I wasn’t there.’ Podger was performing Bach’s Solo Violin Sonata in C, BWV1005. ‘It happened during the first episode, after I’d established the theme. I was obviously doing the stuff, but I was so immersed in it – I’d been playing it every day for three months; it was what I did. I came back into my body quite quickly, though, mind you. I remember being absolutely exhausted after the fugue – which, of course, you always are, but there was other stuff going on, definitely.’
Podger used her Banff residency to prepare for the recording sessions of Volume 2 of her debut solo album. I grab the opportunity to stroll down memory lane, back to 1997-99, to ask her exactly what it was like to record Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. ‘I was very excited, but a bit scared as well. In my mind, I knew the enormity of it. I knew that it wasn’t really the thing to do – for your first solo recording to be of Bach. But I just thought, “Why not? I love these pieces and I think I can do it.”’
Podger fondly remembers it as a period of fertile experimentation. ‘We messed around with the acoustics and the positioning inside the church. Jared put some wooden planks on the pews, and I would jump up, and I stood up there on the pews. That was really, really wonderful – it felt like being closer to Bach, as he was up there, somewhere, but he wasn’t, really, because he was obviously right there with us.’ We laugh at how in spite of the hermetically sealed recording studio (in this case, the Doopsgezinde Kerk, Deventer, in the Netherlands), the outside world always manages to find a way of sneaking in. ‘I remember there was a lot of restaurant smell – next door there was a Greek restaurant. And there were a lot of interruptions because of fireworks (we recorded over new year). But at the same time, it was the strongest experience, where I had no idea what was going on in the outside world apart from the restaurant next door. I wasn’t watching the news. I wasn’t watching any TV in the downtime. We were together all the time: we would eat together, have breakfast together, coffee, tea – together; the three of us.’
These experiences cemented the foundations of a collaborative trio that has produced Podger’s albums since. Later this year, Podger, Freeman-Attwood and Sacks will take on Biber’s Violin Sonatas of 1681. ‘I’ve always adored these sonatas,’ she tells me. They are less known than Biber’s Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas, a set famous for their extensive and extreme use of scordatura. ‘Those are all about the meaning of the resonance which that particular scordatura of that sonata creates. There’s also quite a strict dance element. These other sonatas are more rhapsodic: you get a lot of flights of fancy and stylus fantasticus. They are in your face – so exciting.’ Future recording plans also include more Bach. You might think Podger has covered all bases in this regard – and you would be somewhat correct. Her discography lists the solo, double and triple concertos, the Sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord with Trevor Pinnock and The Art of Fugue with Brecon Baroque. It’s a commitment that contributed to her being the first (and only) woman to be awarded the prestigious Royal Academy of Music (Kohn Foundation) Bach Prize in 2015. In more recent years, she has turned to music that Bach did not originally compose for violin: the Cello Suites and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor (though Bach scholars have postulated that the world’s most famous piece for organ might have actually derived from an earlier violin ancestor). Most recently, Podger and Brecon Baroque took on a new arrangement of the Goldberg Variations by Chad Kelly, which Charlotte Gardner praised in these pages for its ‘finesse-filled joy and humanity coupled with whopping colouristic variety and cumulative power’ (12/23). I’ve also heard Kelly’s wonderful arrangement of the Italian Concerto, BWV971, at the Brecon Baroque Festival – a community-focused long weekend that brings leading Baroque musicians to Wales. It’s an event at which Bach is almost guaranteed to be on the menu, and of which Podger is Artistic Director.
Like any musician at the top of her game, Podger has to plan years in advance. Her teaching commitments in London, Cardiff (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama) and New York (Juilliard School), as well as her position as Principal Guest Director of the Toronto-based ensemble Tafelmusik, keep her mind-bogglingly busy and more inspired than ever. On what it’s like directing Tafelmusik, she says: ‘They’re very open to possibilities. There is no – well, for want of a better word – judgement. In our very first rehearsal, it felt like I was playing in a string quartet. I would just do a tiny little movement, and then [snaps fingers] they were just all already there, where I was going. They really just go with your ideas, so it makes it more possible for me to experiment with things.’ Podger particularly loves the level of involvement and commitment shown by the Tafelmusik musicians. ‘I remember one horn player saying something about the viola part! I loved that! That’s how they work – it’s democratic, very much a family.’ Podger has families like this across the world. Her dedication to her art is perennially inspiring, and it’s no surprise that Tafelmusik created the role of Principal Guest Director just for her. Podger has stood at the helm of the English Concert, the Gabrieli Consort and Players and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. (Her Bach Double Concerto with Andrew Manze and the Academy of Ancient Music is my go-to for when I’m having a bad day.) In my eyes, she’s less ‘the queen of the baroque violin’ (deservedly high praise from the Sunday Times) and more a mother to all baroque string players. It’s difficult to wrap things up: we meander extremely easily into gossip and our shared love of hiking, as well as into pink-hued reminiscing. I get ready to leave the room, expecting us to take the lift back down to the foyer together. It’s now 9pm, after all. But Podger decides to stay: she wants to practise. Out-of-body experiences, evidently, don’t create themselves. ‘That was unique. I don’t think I’m going to aim for that again. It happens to you – you can’t make it happen.’
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