Interview
Frank Sternefeld Music Matters
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05/12/2009
Music Matters meets and talks to Frank Sternefeld, the distinguished and popular Opera North harpist for the past 31 years, whose last concert with the orchestra this is before his retirement.
Frank Sternefeld: Music Matters
Frank has, for all these years, provided one of the orchestra’s most distinctive sonorities day in, day out. He is a self-effacing and extremely congenial and popular colleague and has been a great ambassador for Opera North – not least in the Orchestra’s many concert appearances here at Leeds Town Hall where he is well-known to International Concert Season audiences.
Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs
They move me to tears each time I hear them. The music has a real humanity and the song texts themselves also, of course.
Wagner: Good Friday Music from Parsifal
The first Wagner opera I ever heard when I was a teenager and it made the most amazing impression upon me. My father* used to conduct it every year on Good Friday, so I heard it much when I was young. Though I haven’t heard it a great deal since, the music really made its mark and has stayed with me.
* Frank is the son of distinguished Belgian conductor and composer Daniel Sternefeld (1902 – 1986) of Royal Flemish Opera and Belgian Radio Symphony Orchestra fame.
Stravinsky: The Firebird
I’m fascinated with the orchestral colours and textures in music generally, but very especially in this work, and they’re one of the main reasons why I enjoy playing it so much with the orchestra amid all that richness of sonority.
Debussy: Danse Sacrée & Danse Profane
for harp and string orchestra
These dances comprise two of the very greatest pieces works in the repertoire of the harp. I’d like a recording of the pieces made by my teacher Thia Berghout with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – she was their harpist for years. Besides being not only a quite wonderful and inspirational teacher, she was like a mother to me.
Ravel: L’enfant et les sortilèges
The combination of Ravel’s music and the words by Collette is sublime, really. That’s all there is to say.
Your book?
A book? It would have to be Alain Fournier, Le grand meaulne, I would like to take that with me.
And a luxury?
A tapestry kit with all the appropriate accessories.
What do you look forward to about retirement?
Being able to play the pieces that I like to play, at a time of my own choosing, in other words when I like to play them (!), outwith the normal schedule and repertoire selections made by others.
Book for Frank Sternefeld performing with the Orchestra of Opera North as part of Leeds International Concert Season
