Interviu: Lacrimosa

Cu cateva ore inainte de inceperea festivalului ARTmania 2008 am vorbit cu cei doi de la Lacrimosa, Tilo Wolff si Anne Nurmi, abia intorsi de la o plimbare prin Sibiu, in timpul careia s-au lasat agatati de fani, fotografiati si jefuiti de autografe (ca si a doua zi, cand i-am vazut pe pietonala asaltati la tot pasul de oameni mai timizi sau mai indrazneti).


Why choose performing in German in front of a mostly English speaking international audience? Isn't it a bit hard to communicate with the fans?

When I started with Lacrimosa I didn't even think of having concerts, it wasn't planned at all and it took me like three years to get on stage after I started with Lacrimosa. At that time I already had two albums released and never thought of concerts especially concerts outside Germany or Switzerland.

That was more like I was overrun by the fact that people from non-German speaking countries were listening to Lacrimosa and what I hear mostly is people saying I don't have to understand the lyrics, because I feel in the music what you're singing about and I think that's the key why so many people from so many different countries listen to Lacrimosa, including those who don't know the lyrics.


So you didn't expect at first such a tremendous success?

No, I didn't start Lacrimosa as a band, I started it just as a project to play to my friends in a local club where I used to go to.


You played (on album Elodia) with London Symphony Orchestra. Have you ever thought of a symphonic tour, together with an orchestra? How is it like to play with so many musicians?

I wouldn't do a tour with an orchestra from two reasons. First you have to play a fix program. Musicians can't improvise on stage. They have they scores and they play what's written there, But we react very much to the audience during concerts, so we couldn't do that. It would be more like a theater play. In the beginning of the evening you know how it would end because it's scheduled already. And that's not what we understand as live concert, live concerts should always be different, always a surprise.

That was the first reason. The second one is to find places in which you can get a band plus an orchestra of, say, 70 people on stage, to fit all together and to have a proper sound... it's very difficult to find. And if you do something it would be a shame to do it in concert places... where not enough space or acoustics are not enough, In most of those concert places people can't drink alcohol or can't smoke inside or whatever.

It would be a totally different atmosphere. If we did that, it would be more like a one happening in one or two cities and it would be more like kind of a musical, not a normal Lacrimosa show... And that's not planned yet.

What’s the red line that connects every piece of this puzzle, what’s the constant part of Lacrimosa’s music, no matter the album or the style?

The red line is the emotion in the music. That's all coming from the same art and... music is very different sometimes but you will notice this also at the concert tonight because we will play stronger songs and more emotional songs. There is one emotional line that connects everything.


Your affinity for Mozart's music is well known. In what other composers do you find inspiration?

I started to discover Bach again... I very much like Vivaldi, Pachelbel, so more in the area of Baroque music. What I miss there is the dynamic because Baroque music, which is very beautiful for my taste but they didn't know anything about dynamics, which made the music completely different later on and especially Lacrimosa... if you listen to the albums, they are very dynamic, so it's interesting to take aspects of the Baroque music and to transfer it in our times where you can add the dynamic into it and get something totally new.

The question would be what would Bach - for example - compose if he would live nowadays and to try ... (not as if we were geniuses as Bach) to do Baroque with dynamics and combine with contemporary guitars, to mix them all together.


How do you account for your Gothic appearance on stage?

I don't know if it's actually "Gothic look" but more like the way we like to dress and wear. Of course it's influenced by Gothic and a bit by metal or whatever but it's nothing "fixed". This morning I've been walking around in jeans (not blue, of course, but black ones :-), we're not very strict in our dress code, we wear what we like.

Yes, we've seen you walking around Sibiu. How do you like it?

Many traditional houses in very good shape... We climbed up in the tower, it's very beautiful.

You had some collaborations in the past with Witt, Kreator, and also Atrocity, who will be playing on the same stage this weekend. Tell us something about your future collaboration plans.

We're not planning anything right now. If someone's coming up with a good idea and if we have the time, it's ok, but it's gotta be a really good idea.

We get many requests for collaborations but it's gotta be something different than what we normally do. You know, there are many bands that like Lacrimosa or were influenced by Lacrimosa and who ask us for collaborations but that's not so interesting for us because it's so close to what we do anyway, so it's gotta be something different.


What are your connections to the German music scene? Preferences, closer connections, even friends?

We don't have such a close contact with the German music scene since we've been in Switzerland... we have contacts with some artists, like Mille from Kreator...  but there are not so many bands from Germany that we have close contact to and actually there aren't so many that we really like, because our music taste is not exactly what you might expect and we're not really listening to metal and Gothic so we don't hang only around metal guys...

Last question is about the new album, when will it be released, how is it going to be...

Well, it's gonna be released when it's ready and I don't know when it's gonna be. The connection with our other albums will be again the emotional content of the album, it's gonna be very Lacrimosa-esque.

The production is gonna be something very special that Lacrimosa didn't do so far ... of course you will hear a lot of Lacrimosa in it but also you will hear new things. I think I've never been working so long on an album like this one... There are going to be so many personal, deeper going emotions. So I don't have a release date because I want to end this project when I really have the feeling "now it's all done", and not because there's no time.

Are we going to hear any new songs tonight?

No... We'd like to play new songs, but the problem is that too many people are recording and uploading it on the internet.

Thank you very much, looking forward to see you tonight!

Foto de la interviu si de la concert in galerie

Cum a fost la ARTmania: Ziua 1 si Ziua 2.


La acest articol au colaborat Cristina Petrescu si Cristina Foarfa