Musical versatility personified - Juliane Banse
By Eva Gesine Baur


Juliane Banse doesn’t appear to have a care in the world. Certainly not as far as her technical skills or her acting, her depth of interpretation or her security of intonation are concerned. And yet she does indeed have a problem, albeit one which many would undoubtedly find enviable: that of versatility. Every aspect of her performance helps her to win over her audience because, as a critic from the FAZ acknowledged, she is able to “interpret meaning with a wealth of nuance”.

So what exactly is so problematic about that? After all, she seems to rise above every challenge with ease, including that of reconciling her private life as a conductor’s wife and the mother of three children with her career. But it is simply not enough these days to be a great artiste, gifted with beauty and charisma. One must also be able to market oneself. And in that respect, versatility can often prove a hindrance, no matter how much we might admire it in deceased geniuses.

The waters of the mainstream have been used by marketing strategists to thoroughly brainwash us. And with no little success: we convince ourselves that it is crazy to swim against this tide. If you idolise efficiency, versatility must appear wasteful indeed.

So why does Juliane Banse not adopt a more streamlined approach? Why does she not want to be encapsulated in a single sentence? After all, she can choose who or what she wants to be. She could win acclaim as the Mozart specialist who achieved international fame as Pamina at the tender age of twenty, shone as Ilia, Susanna and the Countess from Berlin to Lyon, from Glyndebourne to the Salzburg Festival, and breathed new life into Mozart’s concert arias. Blessed with perfect pitch, she could also market herself as a virtuoso performer of contemporary works which are beyond the reach of most. Or as a lieder singer in a class of her own, able to interpret songs by Schumann and Holliger, Richard Strauss and Britten, Schubert and Berg, with equal facility. Then again, she could launch herself as a major, prize-winning pioneer who ventures into uncharted territory, having won the Echo Prize and BBC Award for her interpretation of Koechlin’s vocal works, as well as the German Record Award for Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments. Yet she stubbornly refuses to settle for just one of the many available options, even although this would make it so easy for her to brand herself in a memorable and distinctive way.

“Versatility is important to me personally,” says Juliane Banse.

She knows where this attitude has come from. It was her great mentors Brigitte Fassbaender and Daphne Evangelatos who taught her the richness of nuance which is now so greatly admired, but which requires the ability to master new shades of meaning every day. Then there was opera director Harry Kupfer, who – as is his wont – remorselessly scrutinised everything about her, “from her eyebrow to her little pinky”. She learned in the hard-knock school of authenticity. But imbuing very different characters with credibility is only possible if one has plumbed their most hidden depths. Last but not least, there was Claudio Abbado, who inculcates spiritual awareness and is interested in only one thing: getting to the very heart of the matter. Yet how is one to know what that is, if one hasn’t a long history of traversing the different genres of music?

Juliane Banse’s interpretations are rightly referred to as meaningful. But she has this ability only because of what she has known, experienced, understood and suffered, a resource like a precious wellspring which she has at her command. It is only her ability to draw from this immense reservoir which enables her to satisfy Mahler’s appeal to musicians. The most important part of the music, he said, was not in the notes. It was the responsibility of the artiste to make it heard.

And not even the most perfect technique, the most sensual timbre, will suffice in itself.

That Juliane Banse trained as a ballet dancer can not only be seen, but can also be felt and heard. She is aware that flitting between so many musical genres requires a balancing act. But she also knows that she will continue to succeed precisely because her versatility provides her with inner equilibrium.

In an age when a search for meaning has become the leitmotif of the western world, this is where the future lies. Because it is not in the mainstream that meaning is to be found. Talking to Juliane Banse, one has the sensation of being swept along. And, in the process, discovers a thousand and one secrets within her depths.