If you want to understand why Jonas Vitaud keeps being invited back as artistic director of the Syros International Music Festival, start with this France Musique series: « Jonas Vitaud, le monde au bout des doigts ». Over five episodes, Judith Chaine does not offer a promotional clip, but a true listening diary — training, repertoire, teachers, and the ethics of interpretation.
Vitaud’s path is told without varnish: a shy child who found refuge at the piano; decisive years with unconventional mentors; the organ under the lineage of Tournemire and Messiaen; then the CNSM and Brigitte Engerer, whose Russian repertoire and poetic, image-driven teaching left a deep mark. He speaks of her with nuance — « rarely satisfied with herself », yet « fascinating » when she sat at the keyboard.
The series shines when chamber music enters the story. Vitaud explains how trio and duo work helped him overcome the anxiety of solo appearances: dialogue, shared risk, and forgetting the ego. He describes chamber repertoire as « three-dimensional » — thematic and sonic planes that cannot unfold the same way in recital.
Contemporary music is not an appendix. His encounters with Henri Dutilleux and György Kurtág are recounted as formative shocks: Kurtág as the most demanding musician he has worked with, obsessed with the « infinitely small », asking that every note be fully conscious. That discipline, Vitaud suggests, leads back to « the essence of music » with minimal means.
On interpretation, his formula is memorable: after rigorous preparation, « let yourself go and abandon yourself to the present moment » — because « the work has been done, you must trust yourself ». He insists that sound is « a gesture, a thought », and that each repertoire asks for a different physical and expressive language.
For festival audiences, this podcast is the ideal companion before hearing him on Syros: you will recognise the same clarity, the same appetite for partnership, and the same refusal to separate technique from musicality — « technique is only a means to an end ».
