I first met Henri Dutilleux in the late 1980s, through my friendship with Darius Milhaud’s widow, Madeleine. She had known Dutilleux and his wife Geneviève for years and was constantly amused by the differences in their characters. Where Dutilleux was in general peaceful (except on odd occasions, as we shall see), Geneviève was a bundle of energy with strong opinions, as you can judge from her 1988 recording of the Piano Sonata Dutilleux wrote for her shortly after their marriage in 1946. Dutilleux was obviously very fond of Madeleine, whom he once described to me as ‘un cas’ (‘a case’).
In 1991 I interviewed him for a now defunct magazine in celebration of his 75th birthday that January, and from then on I would always go and see him when we were both in Paris, and this would inevitably include a meal in a restaurant, Dutilleux enjoying his food as muchwriters of sub-Fauré and sub-Ravel. Lazy: the fake Couperin maniacs, writers of rigaudons and pavanes.’
