Jean-Guihen Queyras: Music Is What's Between the Notes
Jean-Guihen Queyras on the ever-changing nature of Bach Cello Suites, the influence of Boulez and Marais, and a decades-long musical career shaped by collaboration and exploration.
 | By Lucy Cheung 28 September 2026 |
A week ago, French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras performed Bach’s complete Cello Suites at Wigmore Hall in London. The day before the concert, we spoke for more than an hour. On 27 and 29 September, he will bring the same programme to Shanghai and Shenzhen, marking his first solo recitals in mainland China. He has previously performed in China with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as with chamber ensembles.
Our conversation began with French Baroque composer Marin Marais, and moved through Queyras’s two recordings of Bach’s Cello Suites, his choice of gut and modern strings, Pierre Boulez’s influence on him, his long-standing partnership with pianist Alexandre Tharaud, his journey to Kyiv two years ago, and his continuing exploration of different musical traditions.
After decades of playing Bach, Queyras is still finding new freedom in the music.
In Conversation with Jean-Guihen Queyras
LC=Lucy Cheung
JGQ=Jean-Guihen Queyras
On Marin Marais
LC: The first time I saw you perform was in 2011, at Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, where you played with Alexandre Tharaud. I remember it very well because you played the Kodály Cello Sonata and the Poulenc Sonata. I also remember wanting to buy the CD afterwards, but the ATM had run out of cash. I first went to that concert because of the Marais music. At the time, I asked whether you had any plans to record it, and you said you didn’t. More than a decade later, you finally did. What does Marais mean to a modern cellist?
JGQ: Both Alexandre and I like to explore territories which are perhaps not originally ours. We like making transcriptions, playing pieces which are not originally for our instruments, because we can enter other worlds. We both enjoy making the cello into something else, and making a concert piano into something else.
Just two days ago, I gave a recital with a programme I designed called Roots, with the Kodály Sonata and two pieces from Turkey, which are also very much rooted in the culture of their country. One of them was composed by Fazıl Say. He wrote a new solo sonata for me, and there is a moment when I have to play the cello in a certain way so that suddenly the cello sounds like a duduk, this wind instrument from Azerbaijan and Turkey. I enjoy suddenly having this feeling that, yes, this is a cello, but it can sound like a duduk.
Alexandre and I have done transcriptions of other things too, songs by Schubert and Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. Marais was something we wanted to explore because we both love this very, very French music. Marais is so French in the way he ornaments the harmonies, and he has a language which fascinated us. He can write two hours of music with five harmonies. That’s almost an exaggeration, but it’s true. The progressions are almost always the same, but it never sounds the same. He is always telling a story, and we always want to listen to him.
LC: Such as the 32 variations on Les Folies d’Espagne.
JGQ: Exactly that. And even in his suites, which are not variations, it’s very, very impressive how he creates music which is so rich with so little.
On Choosing Strings
LC: You used modern strings for the Marais project. I know you use different strings and bows for different projects. So how do you decide what works for a particular piece or period?
JGQ: It’s a very good question. If you look at what I’ve done with modern and historical setups, it seems a bit random. I play some Schumann on gut strings, but then I play some Bach on modern strings. How does that make sense?
First, I would say this. Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who was one of the pioneers of historically informed performance, was asked why he conducted the Chamber Orchestra of Europe when the musicians were playing modern strings. He said, in the end, it’s not about which instrument you play, but how you play it. I agree with him. I think this is the most important thing. Having had the experience, again and again, of playing on gut strings does teach me a lot about the language. And then I can absolutely go into that language on a modern instrument.
There are composers, in my view, who depend more on the actual production of the sound than others. Bach is a bit of a paradox because his language is so strong that you could transpose the Suites for tuba and it would still be a great masterwork. The language is so strong that, in a way, the exact instrument you use, even if it’s not a cello, is almost secondary.
I have played the Bach Suites on gut strings a lot. So why did I record them twice on a modern setup? The reason is the Sixth Suite. I like to play all the Suites on a four-string cello, and as I see you are very informed, you know that the Sixth Suite was composed for a five-string instrument. If you play it on four strings, it doesn’t work on gut strings, in my experience. Since I like to play the complete Suites when I’m on tour, and I have learned these six Suites on four strings, that’s what I do.
I don’t feel that I’m missing something because of the strings. For example, I use a Baroque bow because the articulation is better. It works better, and it works well with the cello I’m playing now.
It’s a different instrument. For the last two years I’ve been playing a Stradivarius. Before that, I played a Cappa for 17 years. That’s another example of how I’m pragmatic. I want to do what works best for me and for this music.
With the Cappa, the Baroque bow didn’t work well. I would always go back to my Tourte, a very light one, but a very beautiful one that produced an absolutely gorgeous sound. On this one, I have a Baroque bow which works fantastically with the Stradivarius. I’m very happy with it.
On Bach
LC: When I listened to your 2023 recording of the Bach Suites, I had a very visual impression. There was something like flickering light and shadow, almost as if a figure were moving through fabric, through doors and changing light. I had that feeling before I even read about your collaboration with choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. I also felt that the singing line was continuous, never interrupted. What does a sense of breath mean to you in the six Suites?
JGQ: I’m happy you talk about the breathing and the sense of line, what makes us travel through a work, particularly such a special work: two and a half hours of music. When we talk about breathing, the first two things that come to mind, as living creatures, are breathing and the pulse, the heart. And in music, it’s the same. It’s not a coincidence. I find it a very, very interesting topic.
When you talked about this uninterrupted movement through shadow and light, I think that’s what I experience with harmony. There is this thing in music that we call the pulse, and the pulse is what our heart is doing. Then the breathing, everything, that’s the harmony.
Harmony is basically what leads us. One harmony is calling for the next harmony, the next chord. It’s this relationship between the harmonies, between the chords, that always leads us further.
That makes me think of this quote from Yo-Yo Ma: “Music is what’s between the notes.” The notes themselves are not enough to make music. What makes them music is the relationship between them.
LC: And how did your collaboration with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker affect your understanding of the Suites?
JGQ: The dance was simply a wonderful chance for me, for a few years, to play the Suites with dancers physically next to me on stage, working with gravity and with the harmonies, going from one chord to the next. They would be taken into speed and then into moments of immobility. To have that physically with me on stage was very nourishing for me. It reminded me: don’t forget, this music is about pulse, it’s about gravity. And I think it influenced my second recording.
LC: What made you decide to record the Suites again? Was there a strong impulse behind the decision?
JGQ: I’ll be totally honest with you. It was actually the head of the label, Harmonia Mundi. He came to one of the performances with the dancers, and I had heard more and more from many people, “It has really evolved since the 2007 recording.” People felt that it had gone into something really different and something new, and that it was worth recording. I didn’t have an urge to do it.
But the head of Harmonia Mundi said, “Really, you should do it. You should do it now. It’s really worth it.” I’m very grateful that I did.
It was also a very interesting process for me to re-record. During the recording sessions, for each movement I would first do a first take. Then, together with the producer, we would listen to the 2007 recording, and then we would say, “What do we want to say differently? What are we proposing differently this time?”
It was very different from one movement to the next. But in general, the difference that I noticed is that with experience, with age and with interaction with the dancers, I have gotten a few steps further in giving more freedom to the melody, thanks to relying more on the pulse and the harmony.
If you really trust your pulse and your harmony, then you can improvise more with the melody. So I’m taking more liberties in the 2023 recording.
But as I tell my students again and again, freedom is not “I do what I want”. That doesn’t work like that. You have to ground it in the harmony and in the pulse.
On Place
LC: Does the sense of place change anything for you when you perform the same piece?
JGQ: Music is such an art of the moment. So is dance, and so is theatre. I have a son who is a painter, and it’s totally different. Painting is not an art of the moment. Where we play, the audience for whom we play, the people who are in the hall, the acoustics, all of these things play a role.
Five days ago I was in Köthen, which is where Bach composed the Suites. I was very moved to be there. I had already once played at Bach’s tomb in Leipzig, but now I was playing in Köthen, where Bach went to the church, in the castle where the Brandenburg Concertos were premiered, in the chapel where one of his sons was baptised.
To play in these places influences my playing because I’m thinking of Bach just being there and doing his things, living there for a few years with his first wife. And tomorrow it’s Wigmore Hall. Wigmore Hall is different. It’s this iconic chamber music venue in England, with so much history, so many incredible artists and wonderful acoustics. It’s also the iconic quality of the place. You think of all the artists who have been here. It has history.
On Pierre Boulez
LC: You worked with Pierre Boulez for about ten years, joining his ensemble when you were very young. What did he leave you with?
JGQ: I was so lucky. I entered the Ensemble Intercontemporain just at the end of my studies. I was 23. I had just finished my studies in New York. In fact, I was in my last year there. I won the audition and asked them, “Could you wait? Let me finish my master’s in New York and then I will come in the summer.” And they waited. It was the beginning of my professional life, but actually it was a very important part of my formation, of my becoming a musician. It was invaluable, not only Boulez, but simply being in this ensemble, playing new music.
Because it was Boulez’s ensemble at the time, the composers would always be there. They would constantly come and work with us, and you could ask questions. You could explain, “What do you need from me as a performer?” This was invaluable for playing composers from the past as well.
As for Boulez specifically, I would say two main things. First, he was simply very charismatic, but very charismatic because he was burning for music. As a composer, he was very intense. You can hear it in his music. His music is like an explosion of energy.
And as the head not only of the ensemble but of IRCAM, this huge centre for research into music in Paris, and as a conductor, everything he did, he did 300 percent. He was very present. He was somebody who seemed to sleep five hours a day and have five lives. The amount of work this man was doing was incredible. He was very demanding, but always respecting the person. There was a lot of humanity in his relationship with us. Once I had an injury and had to stop playing for six months. Regularly, I would get a call or a little card saying, “How are you doing? We think of you.”
At the same time, he expected us to give our best, to come prepared to rehearsals, to be very focused on the work. There was an ethic.
And the last thing I would say is about his choices in interpretation. I didn’t make all of his choices mine. He was really focused on the score and the clarity of the score. He was famous for making the music very crisp and transparent, so that you had the feeling you could see the score in front of your eyes. That’s a little opposite to somebody I also admire so much, Bernstein, who is all about passion. But there is one thing I took from Boulez very much. He really wouldn’t like it if someone tried to put things into music that were not in the score. It’s a bit like if you have a wonderful Italian dish, with just the right thing, and somebody comes and puts a lot of cream on it. You just don’t do that.
On Ukraine
LC: Your recent album is devoted to Lutosławski and Bloch. Lutosławski’s music feels unmistakably shaped by the post-war period, but also very raw and tense. When you play it now, do you feel that it resonates with what is happening in Europe today?
JGQ: Thank you for this question. It’s very interesting, because of course we should not take music out of the context in which it came to life. You are right that Lutosławski was composing at a time when the eastern part of Europe was struggling in many ways. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t think of it that way. But if you think particularly of this concerto, it is a bit like the cello is David and the orchestra is Goliath. The small cello is fighting against an orchestra, trying again and again to keep its ground, sometimes by force, sometimes in other ways.
Of course, I happen to be very sensitive to the cause of the Ukrainian people, who are very courageous people, fighting for their freedom.
LC: You went to Kyiv as well in 2024. What did that experience mean to you?
JGQ: When we went there, I wanted to show that I really had these people in my heart. I asked some Ukrainian friends, some musicians I knew, “Is it welcome if I come? Is it good news, or do people have enough to deal with and don’t want to have to deal with this as well?”
And they said, absolutely. They want people to come and to play. When I knew that, for me it was a clear case. I needed to go.
One of the incredible aspects of the Ukrainian people is that, as long as they can, they try to lead a normal life while trying to fight for their freedom. The restaurants are open. The concert halls are open. The orchestras go to work. The conservatory tries to go on. We were in Kyiv. Sometimes concerts are interrupted by air-raid alerts. We were lucky. The week when we were there was not so terrible. We would hear the alarms at night sometimes, and the interceptions of missiles, but it was quite a quiet week.
LC: What did you hope your music could bring to people there?
JGQ: It was really about showing presence and love to these people who are isolated because of this war. And I do that with what I know how to do. What I can do with music.
We went to a rehabilitation centre for wounded soldiers, and suddenly what you do by bringing your music has a purpose. If I was a cook, I would bring food. I’m a musician, so...
On Alexandre Tharaud
LC: Did you and Alexandre Tharaud meet through the Arcanto Quartet?
JGQ: No, he never collaborated with Arcanto. Alexandre and I met in the 1990s, when I was still in the Ensemble Intercontemporain. We met at a theatre show where we were both in the audience. A mutual friend introduced us. Of course, I knew about Alexandre, and he knew about me.
Then, by chance, we were also recently in the same artist agency, on the same roster. So we started playing concerts together, and immediately had a lot of fun. We became like two brothers.
LC: You have been playing together for many years. What is the chemistry you find in each other?
JGQ: Again, these things, the magic of two people getting along together, can only be explained up to a certain point. The true reason why it works is chemistry. But I can say that our way of looking at music and experiencing music is very similar. I think that’s a prerequisite. You need that for such a long collaboration. When we rehearse, and it was already like this at the beginning, we never had to talk for hours about, “Do you think this phrase should be like this?” No, we knew. This music is playing like that, and that’s it.
And then there is even more on a personal level. We really feel like two brothers. Two brothers have something fundamental which is the same: the same sense of humour, the same things that make us laugh, the same things we enjoy.
And we are very different.He is, for example, hyper-organised and disciplined. You can ask him in two years what he is doing on a particular day, and he knows exactly. “That’s in my sabbatical, and then two weeks after I’m playing this recital.” I have no idea. People ask me, “What’s your next project?” I’m like, “I don’t know. Tomorrow I’ll play the Bach Suites, and then I will see.”
On the day of a concert, Alexandre has rituals. He will eat at that time, and then he does yoga one hour before the concert. With him it’s really organised, disciplined. My goodness, so disciplined. Most of the time after the concert, he goes to bed. Very often after a concert, the promoter wants to invite you for dinner, and I like to eat after concerts because I’m hungry. He likes to get a little plate backstage at the interval. He eats during the interval, and at the end of the concert he’s gone. He mostly goes to sleep.
LC: And do you know what is your next project?
JGQ: No, no, I exaggerate! After this concert, next week I have a recording session with another pianist. I’ve done other things with Alexander Melnikov, as you may know, and now I’m going to record with Javier Perianes. This will be our second recording together. We had a trio recording two years ago with Tabea Zimmermann and Javier, and now we have a duo recording of Spanish repertoire. I’m also going to play a lot of Beethoven trios, because of the Beethoven year. And I’m going to play the Triple Concerto with Isabelle Faust and András Schiff, with the new orchestra that John Eliot Gardiner is creating.
On Beethoven
LC: I really like Beethoven, is there a particular work by Beethoven that is especially close to your heart?
JGQ: I share your passion for him. If I had to choose one composer, it would be Beethoven. It’s difficult to choose one particular work, but I remember when I was studying in New York. I was there for three years, and one year was very tough. New York was very tough for me.
I was very poor, and that’s not a city where you want to be very poor. And I was not used to big cities. I grew up in the countryside, and then I spent three years in Freiburg, a little cute town where the quality of life, nature, people, everything is gentle to you. New York is a jungle. I was not used to that. I was like a little animal. I was not doing well. And in that moment, there was one piece by Beethoven which I would listen to again and again. It was the slow movement from the Second “Razumovsky” Quartet, the E minor Quartet. There is this slow movement, almost 20 minutes, with this dotted rhythm.
Beethoven, by the way, wrote to a friend that he got the inspiration for this piece while lying down and looking at the stars, at the sky. There is this dimension in the music. That’s why it spoke to my heart when I was struggling. When you are under the sky and you look up, you are by yourself. You are very alone, but there is the whole universe. The loneliness and the universality, brought together. That’s Beethoven, pretty much.
On Classical Music
LC: I’ve just come back from Greece, and I’ve been listening again to your album Thrace. I imagine this is the kind of unfamiliar musical territory you were talking about earlier, the kind of territory you and Alexandre both like to explore. How did this album come about?
JGQ: It started a long time ago, actually. And I like to let things happen naturally. The two percussionists, Bijan Chemirani and Keyvan Chemirani, grew up almost together in the south of France. They have Iranian backgrounds, but they grew up in France, and we were neighbours. We each studied our own music, and then when we were in our twenties, one of them said one day, “Let’s play together.” That’s how it started. Later, they brought in Sokratis Sinopoulos from Greece, who is a wonderful musician. I really love this combination.
LC: For you, is this kind of exploration complementary to classical music? And do you think the term “classical music” is still valid today?
JGQ: I don’t think we should discard this term. It’s okay. For me, classical music is having the chance to go back in time and explore the history of mankind through music, through what they did, and through these great masters who really brought the best of their culture through music. I find it absolutely wonderful.
But I think one should do what one’s own temperament is dictating. I have always been very curious. I always wanted to see what is common between some Greek melodies and some classical pieces that we play, and then you realise, oh yes. Maybe you saw this other project, Musical Swim, with the saxophone. That’s exactly what we do. We play a piece by Schubert, and then in the last bars you start playing them again and again, and you realise, oh, it’s actually a gospel. It’s the same music. Austria, 1825, and Alabama at the beginning of the twentieth century. I like these connections that exist across geography and time.
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