Sunday, September 15, 2024

Tribute to Narciso Yepes

Before Sabicas, Yepes, who was a classical artist, let's say, in the Gothic movement and ideas, was already seeking to surprise the public and impose the soloist on the public. His immense repertoire, Bach, Weiss, the Spanish and Italian classics, shows that he was then one of the very best in the world.

At that time, other great virtuosos could reach his ankle or at least measure up to him, a few hundred in the world.But Yepes had this conception, this quality or algebraic and arithmetic notion of music, this openness combined with perfection, which made him the man and performer of the moment.

His house was a bunker full to bursting with records, his repertoire the immensity of the sky and the stars. He was an affable, open and very pleasant man, very warm, he loved the public and formed a real relationship of friendship with them and especially his students or children.

Yepes had all the classical guitar records in the world, an impressive quantity of BASF, a helmet on his head, his house was a real haven for classical music. He had all the records.

Sabicas and Django Reinhardt managed to bring out a musical language, a heterogeneous symbolism. Yepes was already of this type too. His musical language was exceptional, the quality of his music and his interpretation too.

Other great classical performers arrived, like Gil de Galvez from Malaga, who gradually made us forget the great Israeli violinist Seyrig. But Yepes contributed enormously to Spanish music. He was a great pioneer, an exceptional performer.

My aunt Maruja, who was one of the two or three founders of the RTVE orchestra, and he were very close personal friends. She was a socialist convinced that there had to be a balance between strength and means, the goals that we had set ourselves. She was deeply socialist and left-wing.

She also gave me the album she had recorded with Narciso Yepes, Rodrigo's Concerto d'Aranjuez, with the violins in the first part, which is not the case in Siegfried Behrend's version, where you only find the strings in the first part. She also gave me Beethoven's Vth conducted by Kurt Mazur. Beethoven's grandmother was Spanish. That's what inspired him to write the Ode to Joy. Maruja knew Barenboim, Kurt Mazur, and even Karajan.

Yepes also recorded, I think, " Fantasy for a Gentleman ".

So Maruja is the daughter of my grandfather's brother, my father's uncle, so she is my father's cousin and my distant aunt. Her own father was mayor of Toro in the 1930s at the time of the Second Republic.

She was a very great virtuoso violinist, a great " prosora ". I was able to see the recital she gave with a very great Czech pianist at the Spanish consulate, and also, the time she performed with the RTVE orchestra at the TMP, I was able to admire an Argentinian mezzo-soprano, one of the greatest divas in the world. The orchestra and its conductor had also notably performed Ravel's Boléro that evening, in addition to Argentinian classical pieces, and De Falla's Tricorne.

Maruja is also one of the two or three founders of this same RTVE orchestra, of which my father said of its conductor " No tienen a ese pico ".

" Luce la orquesta ", as Maruja used to say when the orchestra lit up and got excited under the direction of Cobos, the young Spanish conductor.

We are a family of artists, and if today the great era or period of my father is far behind us, time is still allotted to us on this earth.

Yepes had a very particular arithmetic, algebraic conception of music and interpretation. In his heyday, he had won the exclusivity for Deutsche Grammophon. His repertoire was infinite, so to speak.

I saw him at the Salle Pleyel in recital, in the 70s, he wore a tailcoat suit, and a microphone made the sound throughout the room, the Salle Pleyel has very good acoustics by the way.

I went to see him at the end of his recital, and he shook my hand, I was moved, because Yepes was a true Spaniard, one of the greatest Hispanic artists of all time. At the time I was just a teenager.

He knew how to surprise his audience at the time. Many children followed his lessons. He knew how to innovate then, especially in terms of violin making with his 12-string guitar.

I had the opportunity to visit a French violin maker with Mr. Vignaut a few years ago near the Saint-Lazare train station, a little further up the street. But these were violins. Maruja had a violin with a unique sound that was very expensive and followed him all his life.

In the past, I almost bought a contreras from Serrita. People like Escudéro, Ramon Montoya, Sabicas and Paco de Lucia played on this jewel of violin making. Sabicas even gave lessons to Paco de Lucia on this extraordinary instrument, with the adjustment of the sides on the top, on the top. Such an instrument would have allowed me to give concerts. For concerts, gut strings are used, and Gil de Galvez uses warshall strings for his violins today. Gut strings only last once per performance.

Yepes was a real monument. At the time he was somewhat in competition with Alexandre Lagoya and Andrés Ségovia, the two other greats who were his contemporaries. Lagoya was cooler, my mother said, his version of forbidden games was simpler. Yepes was an unclassifiable worker. He would look for forgotten jewels, forgotten and unique classical pieces. The adequacy with his instrument was optimal. It had been made at his request and custom-made.

I knew Emmanuel Roessfelder a little, one of Lagoya's main students, he even made two dedications for us, one for each of us. He is a great guitarist.

Yepes was a giant, a monument, a genius, he knew how to combine presentation, violin making and musical innovation. The quality of the interpretation was his great strength. The rise of the strings too. His technical rigor was simply breathtaking.

Maruja and he were, as I said, close friends, she followed him throughout his career. She was there with my father and mother during her recital at the Salle Pleyel in the early 70s.

Yepes was ahead of her time. The cleanliness, technique, and rigor of the interpretation left room for imagination and inspiration. Her 32nd notes, her tremolos, her technical passages, her conception of volume were marvelous to see.

Today, there are many other great virtuosos in flamenco and classical music, we play a lot of oratorios, symphonies, and concertos. Yepes was a father and a precursor for classical and chamber music.

Maruja and he recorded together. She also recorded with Segovia I think, with Rocio Jurado and with many variety artists, especially at the time of the movida, which put Madrid and Barcelona into a trance. It seems to me that she accompanied Véronique Samson, who had a great success in Madrid.

Yepes had both a homogeneous and heterogeneous, prosaic and heterogeneous conception.-------- Maruja is buried today not far from Cobos' grave. She had introduced me to the piano, with "la chocolatera", a traditional Spanish tune, near Salamanca where she lived at the time, at the end of the 60s. During this trip, we could see the fighting bulls running breathlessly in the encierros.

When we went to see him, Yepes had wanted my father to take him in his Fiat 238, but at the time, my father had reared up and did not want to compromise himself by transporting him in his van. Yepes did not have a means of transport. He had come to Paris mainly to satisfy the curiosity of his public and his faithful. Like Sabicas with his troupe and Carmen Amaya.

I was impressed that such a giant of music had deigned to direct my speech and conversation, he was a cultured man and open to the world and to different peoples. At the time I was a young teenager, I played for fun.

Yepes played with genius and disposition, he knew how to play and overcome all the difficulties that arose as the concert progressed. His recital was magnificent and worthy of interest. The reviews were overwhelming. Only Manuel Torres and his jaleos, Enrique Morente and his tangos, El Pele and his toñas, or the brilliant recitals of Manuel Agujetas left me with such joy afterwards.

Yepes was truly an immense Iberian artist. He is somewhere apart.

I remember him as having had the chance to know and frequent one of the greatest Spanish artists of all time. My aunt was passionate about music. She had a very special passion for him and took great care of him.

Yepes lit up Paris, his concert was an unprecedented success.

Yepes showed an interest and curiosity for the history of peoples, the Arabs, the Berbers, the Kabyles, the Goths, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, he was an immense Gothic artist, clearly a very great man.

With him we respect work, or the value of work, he knew how to prepare himself over the years, his recital marks a success, the success of a man who made himself and with his friends. He left a little early, but his merit was only greater and more important.

He was an unclassifiable man, who dominated the world by his class and his loftiness, a visionary, truly a very great professional. He anticipated everything, like an eagle spreading its wings above his time.

Yepes exuded perfection, even if some accused him of having given too much volume to " Forbidden Games ", which he performs in the film with Brigitte Fossey. It is a film that tells the story of a little girl during the war under the bombings.

Yepes played the classical Spanish and Catalan repertoire. Today the centers of interest have shifted slightly, the Levant and Andalusia are returning a little to the classical. But there is no more sacred monster like him. There are still a few great performers, but if someone has pulled Spanish music up, it is him.

He played with medium-long nails, where Roessfelder plays with very long nails. He took care of his fingers. In guitar you just need nails that are not too short. My first teacher was English and Mozartian, when I was a teenager, then as an adult I worked for about ten years with Andrés Serrita, one of the main spiritual sons of Sabicas, and also one of the greatest zambras interpreters in the world. But my spiritual father, my mentor, is Narciso Yepes.

Narciso remains a humanist in the great classical and Spanish tradition, he traced different paths, opened breaches.

Meeting him was a chance for me. It is thanks to Maruja that I was able to meet him, and what he told me taught me a lot about musical education, about the world of classical guitar.

A man of such caliber cannot leave music lovers indifferent. He was as brilliant as he was mysterious, interplanetary, and even a bit of a megalomaniac, all things considered.

His equation is that of a genius, and his succession has been popular. It includes quite a few variety artists, people like Manitas de Plata, like Pepe Pinto, Pepe Habichuela who remains a very great flamenco performer. There are many, and a little less great virtuosos of the guitar, violin or viola. Maruja with the orchestra accompanied variety stars, and especially this Argentinian mezzo-soprano, one of the greatest in the world, with this magnificently exceptional Argentinian repertoire.

Yepes remains a great figure of classical and chamber music, a little less of sacred music, although, because he performed a lot of Bach and Weiss.

Others have succeeded him, John Williams especially. But the Spanish succession was popular, with Tomatito, with el Camaron and so many others.

Yepes had the art of measure and an immense poetic taste. That's what made his strength. Even the popes appreciated him.

Today in classical music, it is above all, as always, the piano that predominates. Bella Schütz came to Arnouville a few years ago, she interpreted Gabriel Fauré, one of the greatest French composers. She remains one of the greatest classical pianists in the world.

The piano on which she played belonged to Gabriel Fauré, then it was lost, bought back, repaired two or three times as for Andrés's contreras. Today it is a unique piano, a jewel.

Yepes is a whole era, a whole particular universe, with the successes that we know. De Falla, Joachim Rodrigo, Fernando Sor, Turina, Isaac Albéniz, the Spanish repertoire is also very vast. Yepes has performed a lot of German composers, as Lutheran and reformed as they are energetic and spirited.

He was able to rehabilitate chamber music and other great composers like Weiss.

He owes a lot to Bach. And even today, his reputation remains intact, he remains an immense genius and a man of a particular and sincere charisma. Since him we have strayed a little into the classical, it takes great figures for classicism to find its deep inspiration and its force of expression, artistic movements, like those that came out of 1936. However, today the greatest artists work mainly on the interpretation side.

Yepes' immense discography, endless repertoire remains a reference. The piano remains the reference instrument. It is said that it would take 25 lives of the greatest pianists just to play a small part of Albéniz's Iberia suite, barely a tenth of the work. It is an immense work, where sometimes the pianist plays almost 20 cm above the keys. Few pianists have played the entire work, as for the organ with Bach. Not to mention the psychological difficulties caused by such a technical interpretation.

Albéniz was Basque, like Ravel. The most important instrument, the most essential, is the piano. But Yepes knew how to take the guitar to the top. Few guitarists have gone as far as him.

Yepes knew how to combine lutherie and the instrument with music, optimize his abilities, his physical and technical means, modernize the interpretation. He was going very high with glides and harmonics.

Christian Diez Axnick.