Josetxu Obregón is one of a new generation of musicians hailing from Spain and like many younger musicians in many countries he has undergone further studies outside his own native country. However, what sets this early music performer (as also with Fahmi Alqhai) apart from others is that he has been invited to join the “family” of Glossa artists – indeed Obregón and Alqhai are the first Spanish musicians to join the label since the days of José Miguel Moreno and Emilio Moreno.
With his fellow performers Obregón has created a spectacular entertainment for their first album, Il Spiritillo Brando, which captures the spirit of Spanish courtly entertainment across the 16th and 17th centuries through instrumental music, as well as allowing today’s modern performers to display their virtuosity in music from the time. Appropriately, the recording was made in the Real Coliseo de Carlos III, in Glossa’s home town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
Obregón himself is a noted cellist, having had the opportunity to study with, among others, Anner Bylsma, in Amsterdam. Not surprisingly, Obregón has a strong interest in the music of Luigi Boccherini, who was domiciled in Spain for much of his adult life. For this new album, however, he focuses on three of the Italian founding fathers of music for the cello as a solo instrument. Under the direction of Josetxu Obregón, La Ritirata lead us – with Il Spiritillo Brando – into the dancing entertainments frequently to be heard in the Spanish Court in Naples in the 17th century, including compositions from Andrea Falconieri, who worked there during the time of the “Rey Planeta”, Felipe IV of Spain.
Here, in welcoming Obregón to the label, we have taken the opportunity to talk to him about his new recording and how, as a musician from the recent generation in Spain, he regards the performing of “early music” today.
With your new recording, what are you wishing to imply with the title Il Spiritillo Brando?
The title is that of a piece by Andrea Falconieri, a composer who is not as well-known as I think he should be, but his music is always extremely attractive both to perform and to hear. To me much of this music consists of little dances, games or stories (some with amusing titles, or which are dedicated to people at the court where he was working) and I thought that Il Spiritillo Brando was the most attractive of these – a “spiritillo” being a little Italian demon and a “brando” being a variant form of the branle dance. It seemed to be the right title to encapsulate the kind of character that we are trying to show on the recording, at least with the music of Falconieri.
The most important thing for listeners to a CD of this kind – a mixture of different composers and styles – is to be aware that a story is being told. In our case, alongside all the playful pieces by Falconieri there are more serious works, such as those by Castello, Selma y Salaverde and the later Italian composers.
What else are you trying to show and describe with the recording?
We tried to choose music for the recording that shared a lot of common ingredients, such as the affects that the pieces use, and we have also allowed our individual musicians from La Ritirata to shine, to have their moment; for that reason there are solo harpsichord and organ pieces on the disc. I think that this repertory calls for it. We are also trying to show the state of development of writing for each instrument at this period in time. For me, as a cellist, this moment in history is extremely important because finally cellists were going to start composing solo repertoire.
When I have made other recordings, with only Boccherini trios on them, there is no space for other ideas, but Il Spiritillo Brando is the kind of recording where you are wanting the listener to enjoy the programme throughout and for that reason we have run the tracks very close to each other, giving the feeling of listening to one of our concerts. One can say that none of the composers represented on Il Spiritillo Brando fit into the category of one who are or who should be really well-known but I wanted to show that figures such as the bassoon player Selma y Salaverde, or like Falconieri himself were capable of producing attractive music: it is interesting to show minor composers from Italy and Spain in a way that is really enjoyable and entertaining.
The CD was created out of a programme that I had put together to demonstrate to different audiences around the world music related to Spain from this period. We have performed this music often in South America, where, of course, they are always interested in Spanish culture, but also in places as diverse as Japan, China and Israel, countries where perhaps the people do not have so much of an idea what was going on in Spain in this period. We wanted to show how this music for the court was; I think that it is interesting for audiences to picture a time or a period through music and with these dances on the CD I think you can quite well imagine yourself at that court entertaining yourself with this music: how the court of Spain sounded at that time.
How significant were Giovanni Battista Vitali, Domenico Gabrielli and Giuseppe Maria Jacchini in developing music for the cello as a solo instrument?
Working in the chapel of the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna during the 17th and on into the 18th centuries these three composers were the first to create a solo role for the cello. This was particularly affected by the development of the instrument itself, and in particular of the strings. Previously all the strings would have been made of plain, open gut (and it would have been a lot more difficult to play the lower strings), but by this time a silver thread started to be used around the gut string, thereby allowing the string to be a lot thinner with a lot more velocity and a more attractive sound. With new possibilities for the instrument the cello changed from just being an accompanying, continuo instrument and could now be treated as a solo instrument.
As a cellist of today who often plays compositions from later epochs, what does the Bologna San Petronio music allow you to understand about music for your instrument?
From a technical point of view it shows you where all cello music comes from and it is quite interesting to see that some elements already present in the music of Domenico Gabrielli (elements that were to be used later by Bach in a much more complicated and advanced way) have continued to be important for the instrument. Here, I am thinking of how you can make use of the cello, its register and of the four strings (which were at that time tuned differently – by Bach’s time the tuning was different to that of these three composers), how you can try to get some sense of harmony in a single line and how you can use this instrument at such a low register to also play interesting music soloistically.
When I started studying, I was a modern cellist and played a lot of music with the modern cello before I started focusing on early music with the baroque cello. It has got to the point that I barely play the modern cello these days. I do perform a lot of later repertoire, classical and early romantic repertoire, but with historic instruments.
Where do you feel your musical home is at the moment?
I always find myself at ease with the music of Luigi Boccherini, because it represents another step in the development of the cello as an instrument: Boccherini was one of the first composers to take the technical development of the instrument to the extreme. I think that the most difficult pieces for the instrument can be found in the music of Boccherini, because everything is extremely delicate and poetic whilst at the same time being extremely demanding for the performer. I can clearly see a change in the development of the instrument from Boccherini onwards and I always find myself very close to this music.
You, along with the musicians of your ensemble, can be counted among the new generation of early music performers. What does the term “early music” mean for somebody like you today?
There has been such a huge change between the first generation of musicians who started with the early music movement and us today, to the point that we are likely to see matters really differently sometimes. The important thing here is what is called “Historically Informed Performance” practice (HIP), which means that we are using the proper instruments – and the proper ways of playing them – to play the music as it sounded in that time; this is what I consider early music to be.
At the beginning of the early music movement performers had a hard task to achieve: to demonstrate to audiences a different way of playing early music – rather than by playing it on contemporary instruments of the time. For such musicians, I guess that the task was so difficult that they had to be quite extreme (and I encountered this tendency when myself when I was studying at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, which is where I had the chance to meet many of the pioneers of early music).
Today however, the newer generation is perhaps a bit freer in the way that we approach matters: I think that it is important to maintain the idea of HIP and we should not be too free about our performing approaches. However, at the same time I believe that it is interesting when there is a mix or combination of musical styles being used in a concert, provided that the artist knows what he or she is doing. What I don’t like is when one sells something as early music when it is not. Whilst I also perform with more crossover-orientated ensembles, including jazz and traditional musics, everybody who goes to concerts from such ensembles knows what they are going to get. As a way of mixing Italian Seicento music with other ideas and using historical instrument it is spectacular, but on the other hand if you are going to play Bach I would say that I would want to do it as close as possible to HIP practices.
My view on early music in general is that I think that the newer generations have things a bit easier than our predecessors; we don’t, for instance, have to impose a whole new style upon the listening public. Furthermore, early music is more accepted nowadays generally than it was in the past, with there being a lot of early music festivals in existence. I think that our purpose now is to continue trying to reach out to the public; the important thing is to show audiences around the world that the way we are doing things is the proper way of playing the music from earlier times and how – I would say, as a cellist – it is no longer so interesting to listen to a modern cello with metal strings and a modern bow for the Bach Suites, when actually none of these things existed in Bach’s days. I think that it is more important to show audiences that the more interesting thing at this point in history in playing the Bach Suites for cello is to use gut strings, and the whole technical way of playing at that time.
How do these attitudes feed into the performing approach that you have employed for Il Spiritillo Brando?
Although the common ingredient with the composers on the album is that most of them were writing for the court, the fact that the music ranges over different historical periods is a good example of how we try to be as close as possible to HIP across the CD. We employed a little bit of freedom in this sense by our use of percussion in some of the tracks (as we have done in concert). Whilst this might not be the precise historical approach, I think that the use of percussion provides an attractive ambience as well as helping the audience to understand the pattern of some of the rhythmic variations that happen in some of the pieces. Naturally, in terms of performing music from very different styles I don’t myself play in the Ortiz Recercadas, as I think that that would be crossing a certain line – the cello didn’t exist in the Ortiz’s time!
As a musician from Spain, how do you feel about early music from Spain?
I think that for many reasons music from Spain has always sat somewhere in the shadows, but now people are becoming more aware of it and are gaining access to the many archives. This is good, even if music in countries such as Italy, Germany or France has always been more readily available and played more frequently. In Spain we have had a serious of disasters with our music over the centuries, but I think that as a Spanish musician now, it is important to show as much of this music as possible. However, one needs to be careful: sometimes there is the attitude of wanting just to discover pieces that have not been performed in modern times and playing them. Possibly such pieces do not possess the real quality that is needed to show the world really worthwhile music from Spain. This brings in a problem for us in that it requires an awful lot of hours to study the music just to find the pieces that are really worth the rediscovery.
MARK WIGGINS© 2013 Note 1 Music / Glossa Music photographs © Manuel Prieto