Emmanuelle Haïm

As her ensemble Le Concert d’Astrée celebrates 21 years, the French conductor tells Tom Service of her undimmed passion for bringing Baroque music to a much wider audience

“As conductors, we have to be as strong as we can to fight for the existence of music”

‘I thought the world was collapsing, that music was going to disappear,’ says Emmanuelle Haïm. She’s at home in Paris, the hub of her life as founder of the early music ensemble Le Concert d’Astrée and as a conductor whose international career takes her to the Philharmonics of Berlin, Vienna and New York. And to Korea, where she should be conducting Haydn’s instead of talking to me over Zoom. As the crisis hit in March 2020 and caused the tide of cancellations in her diary, she felt very down. ‘I felt the absence of music so strongly and it was hard to keep hoping. But now