Lina Tur Bonet is happy to be a regular presence in the classic program from Granada. After her successful collaboration with OCG, she has been commissioned to close the Tocar y taner cycle of matinees at San Jeronimo Monastery’ this weekend. She will do this by taking on, with her group Musica Alchemica a monumental commitment: the complete version ‘Las sonatas del Rosario’ by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. This is a true challenge, not only from a technical but also a musical one. . To move it forward, she will need the help of Granada.
-You answer Jordi Savall if we call you Jordi.
-What I’m going to say. It’s a privilege to work with him and be the concertmaster at Le Concert des Nations. Although I knew his artistic talent, it was only through sharing music that I could appreciate him as an artist. It’s bigger than I thought. He and I have gotten along well. I enjoy working with him. It is that combination of artist and human that is his greatest strength. That is what I find most interesting about music. Jordi Sall is someone I’d like to be, in short.
– What does it mean to you to return to Granada again?
It means that I return to a beautiful city, which is musically very important. It is always a pleasure to make an incursion here to work.
-He seems to be closing the morning session of ‘Cantar y taner’ with ‘Las sonatas del Rosario. It was a nice beating.
– (Smiles). I was in Vienna when I prepared this piece. After I completed my training, I kept in touch with the city as well as with many of my good friends and colleagues who are musicians. It was a request by the Viennese Radio for me to play it the first time. We recorded it in one day, with five sonatas at the morning and five at the afternoon. The monastery was home to Jesuits. This was perfect for the music, as Biber was a Jesuit. Between concerts, I used to go to the cell to rest and get my strength back.
Each sonata can be played on a different tuned violin, which complicates matters.
-Certainly. The musician is reading something different than what it sounds like. This happens in 15 different ways. All this work is a giant Enigma machine that must be deciphered. It’s an exciting game of chess. We have performed the game three times, one in Valladolid and one in Tokyo. The concert was recorded by NHK-. Now, it is in Granada. It was a great idea to do them here when they first mentioned it to me.
What attracts you most to these sonatas
First, Biber is a great composer. I also feel very connected to his music and am particularly interested in symbology. This theme is present throughout the work. I actually like to explain some aspects of the audition, while not tiring the audience.
Fabio Biondi, a musician, told us that music should be more accessible to the general public a few days back.
It is wrong to believe that classical music can only be understood if you listen to it. While there are people who have greater sensitivity to this music than others, we need to make sure that the public has a natural connection with the works. We don’t have time for the intricacies. The enjoyment of listening to the works can be increased by knowing certain aspects of them. This will help us attract more people to the concert halls.
-Another outstanding task is to recover authors and especially women whose work is not well performed such as Jacquet De la Guerre.
Yes, that’s a good example, as she was an artist who was well-known in her lifetime. She has not been heard from for many years. She is more than a woman. We have also lived many decades with the repertoires of the nineteenth century. Now, to some extent, the Baroque has been rediscovered. She never fails to please. My mantra is that music history is more than the work of composers. It is the work of performers as well as the preferences of the general public. It was fashionable to listen Mahler in the 1980s…
Alfonso Guerra was the one who made it fashionable.
(Laughs) It was the lace. We also now know that the Baroque has modern elements, so bringing their works closer to our audience is part of our mission.
Which violins will you be using to perform the ‘Sonatas’ this weekend?
-There will also be four: two of my baroque violins (one Bolognese and one anonymous from 1740), and two donated violins by Ruth Obermayer, a wonderful German professional based out of Granada whose generosity I greatly admire.
