It’s now more than ten years since French harpsichord Bertrand Cuiller began carving out new paths with his ensemble Le Caravansérail, founded in 2013. Moving between Bach and more adventurous projects, he still, at 47, cultivates a real taste for risk-taking, true to the spirit of his group: bringing musicians and friends together around ever-shifting repertoire, guided by pleasure and the joy of sharing. 
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A French harpsichordist who trained with Pierre Hantaï and Christophe Rousset, Bertrand Cuiller founded Le Caravansérail in 2013, a flexible ensemble that reflects his own personality: collective, adaptable and adventurous. With his latest album devoted to Bach’s concertos for three and four harpsichords, he is now celebrating ten years of artistic exploration, combining fidelity to the Baroque repertoire with openness to new projects. For Total Baroque Magazine, he looks back on this decade of shared adventures in a lively conversation that combines passion, humour and a quest for musical freshness.
Ten years after embarking on this adventure with Caravansérail, how would you sum up your experience?
Bertrand Cuiller: Honestly, I feel like the adventure is only just beginning. Ten years is really nothing! I think this is mainly due to the fact that the economic and political situation keeps shifting. I feel like I am constantly at the beginning, as though we always have to reinvent ourselves. For example, what meaning should we give to the ensemble, what particular projects do we want to champion? And when I founded Le Caravansérail, I wasn’t starting out with a truly precise idea in mind. I knew I no longer wanted to play in other ensembles but instead to create projects in my own way, with the musicians of my choice. I wasn’t seeking any particular repertoire. This was actually a bit difficult to justify at the start, because I couldn’t say exactly what Le Caravansérail was. It’s not so much an ensemble as a personal project inviting other musicians to gather around repertoires that will constantly shift.
Why this name?
B.C.: It represents what I wanted to do with the ensemble: welcome musicians without really knowing what will happen. They bring with them their own background and story into a given place, for a given time, where something takes place, after which each one goes back on their path. That’s the principle of the caravanserai, where a whole variety of people arrived in this palace for weeks or months and lived together, after which each went back on the road. Freelance musicians are a bit like that: we go into these kinds of caravanserais for a few days. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes not as much. Sometimes we live through very powerful human adventures. I try to create this space by thinking through all the parameters so as to shape beautiful moments.
Are there particular moments that stood out for you over these ten years?
B.C.: There are several programs I’ve loved, such as Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater, which we’ve kept selling for four years now. A Fancy, built around the London theatre scenes of the 17th century, is also one of our signature programs. But perhaps the one I prefer is the program of Bach’s concertos for multiple harpsichords. All the more so because, in bringing together so many harpsichordists, we find a human dimension that is extremely important for me. We’re friends, but we don’t always have the chance to see each other, except to go for drinks! And meeting to play, sharing music with musicians whom one admires and respects—those are even more wonderful moments.
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