David Russell

David Russell

BACH OF GIBRALTAR
From His Spanish Home, Guitarist David Russell Talks About Going for Baroque
Virtuoso guitarist David Russell recorded his first album in 1995 and has released additional discs just about every year since, including the bestselling Reflections of Spain in 2002. Not surprisingly for a classical guitarist, perhaps, his focus has been on Spanish and Latin American music, including Rodrigo's ever-popular Concierto de Aranjuez and Federico Moreno-Torroba's miniature tone paintings. But Russell has also ventured farther afield, returning to his Scottish roots for an album of Celtic folk music, Message of the Sea, and looking back into musical history with a disc devoted to Baroque works. Of course, transcriptions of Bach have been mainstays of the guitarist's repertory since the days of Andrés Segovia, and Russell's most recent project is devoted entirely to music by the great Johann Sebastian. Barnes & Noble.com's Andrew Farach-Colton called Russell at his home in Spain to talk about Bach, transcriptions, and the life of a classical guitarist.

Barnes & Noble.com: How did you first become interested in playing the guitar?

David Russell: I come from an artistic family. Both my parents are artists, and my father also plays guitar as an amateur. He started teaching me when I was a toddler. By the time I was 10 or so, I had decided to be a guitarist rather than an artist simply because I enjoyed playing guitar more and I did it better. I was the best guitarist in the family, my father used to say, but not the best artist. [laughs] At that time we were living in Spain on a little island called Minorca, and there were some old people in the village who knew a bit more than my father about the guitar; they taught me some things. Then, when I was 16, I went to London to get a music degree. Basically that's how I got started.

B&N.com: You must have been aware of Segovia's Bach transcriptions from an early age.

DR: My father played a bit of flamenco, a bit of classical, and a bit of jazz. But he had a really good collection of old 78-rpm records -- everything that Segovia had recorded, basically. So, yes, I've heard Segovia's Bach since I was a little kid.

B&N.com: Besides your father, who else influenced your playing?

DR: After I finished my degree in London, I had a teacher in Spain named José Tomas. He was very famous as a teacher in the guitar world, though he was never famous as a player; he died last year, unfortunately. He was the best teacher I ever had because he was one of those people who makes you feel that you can do it. When you're 19 or 20, even though you may be a cocky young guitarist, you're also aware that people like John Williams play incredibly well and you've still got a long way to go. Tomas was inspirational.

B&N.com: You were born in Scotland, but moved to Spain as a young boy. Do you feel completely assimilated into Spanish culture?

DR: I had all my education here in Spain, so I feel completely part of the culture. But the thing is that I don't look Spanish -- I've got blond hair. If I were living in Norway, I could probably blend in better!

I actually lived in London after I finished school there. And London makes you feel that if you don't live there, you don't live anywhere. New York is exactly the same, I'm sure. But there's a whole world outside London, and there's a whole world outside New York. And so I moved back, married a Spanish girl, and settled here in Vigo, in the northwest part of the country.

B&N.com: Living in Spain must be fantastic for a guitarist, as so much of the repertory originates there. It really is the instrument's spiritual home, isn't it?

DR: Even some of the repertory that doesn't originate from here still has some Spanish influence. Also, it's not unusual to be a guitarist here. In some countries, when you tell people you're a classical guitarist they say, "Yeah, but what do you do for a living?" In Spain it's quite normal; there are many guitarists and guitar teachers. So, while the guitar is certainly an international instrument, here it's the national instrument.

B&N.com: This Bach recording is your second disc of Baroque music for Telarc. Why does Baroque music take so well to the guitar? Or, perhaps I should ask, why have guitarists taken so well to Baroque music?

DR: Sometimes there's a discussion about transcriptions and whether we should do them or not. But in the Baroque period, so many pieces were not instrument-specific. Obviously, not all of Bach's music can be transcribed for the guitar, simply because we don't have enough fingers. But one isn't required to play something only on the harpsichord or the violin, because Bach himself transcribed pieces. So we guitarists have a sense of freedom with Baroque music that we don't have with Chopin, for example, whose music is very much piano-specific.

Another reason is that I would hate to spend my whole life without actually playing a piece by Bach -- even just for my own personal development and pleasure. But at the same time, there's something that I think the guitar can give to a piece that the violin can't, and I try only to transcribe pieces where I feel the guitar brings a new perspective.

B&N.com: How did you select the pieces for the Bach album?

DR: Someone at Telarc said they'd love to have the Chaconne on the record, and I thought, "Great!," because it gave me a chance to record one of the best pieces there is. Then I decided to put the whole D Minor Partita and not just the Chaconne, which sometimes is recorded alone. The E Major Partita is a very happy, light piece, and it complements the D Minor, which is actually quite dark and profound. The Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro is another great piece, a favorite with guitarists, and I love playing it. Finally, I chose to add in a couple of transcriptions of beautiful chorales to fill the album out.

B&N.com: Some of the pieces on it were originally written for the lute, or at least transcribed for the lute by Bach's contemporaries. Is it easier to transcribe a lute work for guitar than, say, the D Minor solo violin partita?

DR: It makes it easier mainly because you can figure out how Bach made his own transcriptions. The guitar can basically do all that the lute can do, except that the lute has some bass notes we can't reach.

B&N.com: One thing I noticed in listening to the disc was the dramatic intensity you bring to the famous Chaconne. It really conveys the feeling of a live performance. Is that difficult to achieve in the recording studio?

DR: My records aren't made in a studio but in a concert hall without an audience, so all the resonance is natural -- there's nothing added to it. If I play in a dry hall, my phrasing will be cramped, but if I play in a beautiful, "live" hall, like the one in Baltimore [where the Bach was recorded], it helps me play as if it were a concert. I can use the whole space, and my dynamic range is expanded. Recording in a dry studio does make it easier for the engineers and producers to edit, but the disadvantages of dealing with the resonance of a concert hall are worth living with to get something that sounds more like a real, dramatic performance.

B&N.com: You said your father played flamenco and jazz. Do you also play other kinds of music besides classical?

DR: No. I doodled in these things, but I was never very good at it. Once I started playing a lot of classical pieces, my father stopped playing classical and only played flamenco. In some ways it was like there a truce between us. But I was never really attracted to the jazz world. I love listening to jazz, especially to old players, and I think that in some ways it would have been nice to play jazz. I'm just not very good at being a jack-of-all-trades. I need to concentrate on one thing.

January, 2003 Andrew Farach-Colton