Introducing Aliisa Neige Barrière

As the Finnish-French conductor Aliisa Neige Barrière joins the Maestro Arts roster, she talks to us about her musical journey, from early signs of her talent to what she has learnt from her mentors and her vision for classical music

What are your earliest memories of music?

My parents always told me that they realised from very early on that I was very sensitive to music. I always reacted to the music and sounds around me. In Paris, where I grew up, we lived on the fifth floor and there was a house nearby where there was always someone playing the violin. I remember being curious about that. It turned out it was a violin teacher living a couple of houses down from us, and she later became my violin teacher. 

My big brother played the piano and would practise with my mother in her office. When I was very little, maybe four, I would hide under her desk and listen to them working. Once when they were practising, his rhythm was off, and they were trying to work on it, when they heard some knocking. It was me trying to beat the rhythm for him to play in time. I’ve never dared to ask him if that was the reason he stopped playing the piano soon after.

When did you start the violin?

I was almost seven, which was quite late by some standards, but my parents were scared to push me in that direction and wanted to be sure it was something I wanted to do. I already did a lot of singing in choirs at the municipal conservatoire, so I already had some musical activities, but violin playing came a bit later. I was immediately very excited about it, so it was clearly my instrument, and it became serious quite quickly. I’ve often thought it was because of its singing quality and the versatility of its wide range.

At what point did you become interested in conducting?

If you had asked my parents, they would have said that in a way, I was always a conductor, because they felt I reacted so strongly to any type of music or rhythm, and I clearly had a need to experience that physically, too. Supposedly the first clue was my dancing to them shaking my baby bottle. I sang in choir at the conservatoire for quite a while, and when I was 15, the chorusmaster asked me, ‘Have you ever thought that you could conduct?’ It was something I had never thought about, but something clicked and it made a lot of sense. He gave me some lessons and chances to conduct some of his choirs. That was how it started. But it was only many years later that I had the courage to pursue it as a career. After many years of focusing on violin playing, I realised I needed to give it a fair shot – I think that still isn’t an easy decision for many women.

How did you feel when you started conducting? 

My first experience conducting a chorus was very emotional. Standing in front of a mass of people is a very physical experience. The sound enters your body – maybe even more so with an orchestra than a choir. It felt satisfying and beautiful – impossible to forget. To this day, I still love the physical experience of being with an orchestra. 

To some extent, you can have that experience listening to live concerts, although the conductor might have the best spot. During the pandemic, many of us realised that sitting in front of your screen watching a concert is not the same as being in a hall, in the same space as the people who are playing and other people breathing the music with you.

Who are your greatest mentors and what are the most important things you’ve learnt from them?

That’s difficult, because I’ve been so lucky. I just came back from working for six weeks with Simone Young at Wiener Staatsoper, and she was extremely generous with her time, both in the workplace and outside. She clearly feels that she has a duty to mentor the people she works with. 

Maybe the person I have worked with the most at this point, and with whom I always love working, is Esa-Pekka Salonen. He has given me a lot of trust and many special opportunities, which is not something to take for granted. Of course, Sakari Oramo, my former teacher from the Sibelius Academy, was a great mentor. It was so inspiring to have a professor who is both so grounded and natural but also has a deep love for music.

You learn a lot from watching other conductors about how to manage time in rehearsals, how to collaborate, how to communicate. In the end, conducting is almost all centred around communication, because that’s really at the core of our job. We try to unite people.

The truth is that there is no recipe, because there are so many factors to take into account. An orchestra is a group of individuals. When you go in front of them, especially if you don’t know them, you never know how people are going to interpret anything you say, or what kind of day or week they are having, which might make them take something the wrong way. Then there are cultural differences that are difficult to foresee. I don’t think there are any absolute lessons to be taken, it’s all about listening and reacting.

What are your thoughts about programming concerts?

I’ve always been interested in taking dramaturgy into account in building a concert. I like the idea that in the process of building a concert programme you’re trying to convey a clear message or tell a story. That means thinking about how the pieces on the programme relate to one another and what story you are telling with them being presented in that particular order. 

Sometimes I like to include text. I’ve created a couple of productions with my brother Aleksi Barrière, who is a stage director and a fantastic writer. I’ve commissioned many texts from him because he has a great ear and understanding of music. For example, I tell him, ‘These are the pieces on the programme, could you write a text that talks about this theme, or tells the story of X and Y?’

Our last project was a concert with four pieces by female composers from the 1830s up to today, and the text was about women finding their place in the orchestral repertoire. The approach he took was to look at that through the lens of male gaze – that of the critic. Historically, in the 19th century, it was always male critics commenting on the music of these women, and often the best compliment they could give a woman was that her music didn’t sound female. We contemplated how far we have evolved today.

What is the importance of diversifying the canon?

It’s always important to renew and enrich our repertoire. There happen to be many historical female composers we don’t know and in the last years it has been important for me to find some of these composers and programme them. There are other criteria for diversity and minority and it’s important we think about those, too. The argument that quality should come first is not valid any more, because we know there is a lot of quality music written by people other than white males. I don’t think it’s acceptable not to think about these things any more.

How important is new music to you?

Anyone who has worked with a living composer will come to the same conclusion, that it’s a luxury to have the possibility to talk with that person – to ask them questions about why these things are on the page, in order to try to understand. It also puts into perspective the work you do across all repertoire, trying to enter the mind of the composer, and opens your eyes and your mind about why things are the way they are. It’s very liberating then to return to older repertoire and look at it with a fresh eye, as if it were just composed. 

Still, in the end, a composer’s process, living or dead, is a mystical thing, and that’s the beauty of our job. After trying to decrypt all the little details, we read through the music and try to build an interpretation that makes sense for us.

You also played Baroque violin – what did that give you?

The reason many people are drawn to the combination of Baroque and new music is that both are so related to the research of colours and exploring with sound. That’s one of the reasons I found myself playing a lot with those two extremes as a violinist. It teaches you a lot about your instrument and its possibilities and brought me strengths as a conductor, including the tools to change the sound of the strings. That’s such a big part of the orchestral sound, where you can make a big impact on the sound of the whole orchestra. I spent a lot of time experimenting with that as a violinist, and it’s something I love working on with orchestras.

What do you consider are the responsibilities of musicians today?

Everywhere in the world, culture is facing cuts and wars are ravaging entire civilisations. That doesn’t allow us to walk along nicely, so I do feel that we have a responsibility to react to what is happening in the world. 

We must also think about ways to reach different audiences and bring diversity in the programming and formats of classical music concerts. This is especially the case with symphonic concerts, which have such a set format of overture, concerto and then symphony. This has become such an institution, and it’s our duty to think about why that is, and to challenge traditions that have set themselves. This format also tends to make us repeat the same pieces, and if they get a place at all, female and minority composers usually get the short end of the stick. I believe trying to diversify can also help us in reaching new audiences.

I also believe we have to clarify the message behind what we’re doing and not just put pieces together because they’re nice or we’re missing ten minutes in the programme. If you have a clear message, there’s a greater chance that the message actually reaches people and makes an impact. That’s why I’m so attached to the idea of trying to rethink the way we’re doing things.

What are your hopes and fears for classical music?

My fears are the same as for everyone right now. Even here in Finland, where I’m based, we’re facing dramatic cuts, which might make a few orchestras cease their existence, and that’s very scary. Everywhere, studies have shown that what we invest in culture comes back at least triple the value. That’s not just theory, but actual data. 

The hope is that there will always be people who believe in the importance of what we do. Art can be such an important outlet, even for people who don’t pursue it in a professional way. Music, writing and acting (for example) are all ways to process our emotions and to communicate. From a very young age, I felt that music was my best way to communicate, much better than words. I was a very shy child, and music gave me a way to express myself and to come out of my shell. It gave me a place and tools to be bold and extroverted in a way I could only be on stage. At first. Step by step it helped me build the courage to do what I do now. That is the power of music.