In the realm of classical
guitar, there is a small handful of luminaries whose concerts and recordings
have earned them international stature. Scottish-born guitarist David
Russell is one of these rare performing artists who has garnered favor
with audiences, guitar aficionados, music critics, and concert presenters
around the world. Born into a family of artists and encouraged to pick
up the guitar at an early age, Russell has always made the guitar the
central focus of his life—from listening to and imitating the
recordings of Andrés Segovia through conservatory studies at
London's Royal Academy to tutelage under the legendary José Tomás.
Russell has accumulated an impressive array of achievements, including
first prizes in several prestigious classical guitar competitions, a
voluminous and growing body of recorded work, and a thriving international
concert career. At the peak of his form, the 50-year-old Russell has
become one of today's most significant classical guitarists.
A direct beneficiary of
Segovia's legacy, Russell is something of a traditionalist. While his
recordings run the breadth of classical styles, in most cases he selects
repertoire that has stood the test of time: his output includes the
music of J.S. Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, Agustín Barrios Mangoré,
Francisco Tárrega, Isaac Albéniz, and Enrique Granados.
Refusing to be easily pigeonholed, however, Russell occasionally departs
from the standard repertoire with recordings such as Message of the
Sea, which features his arrangements of traditional Celtic melodies,
or by including newer or lesser-known works, such as some of the cuts
on his latest Telarc recording, Aire Latino. This newest contribution
follows right on the heels of the critically acclaimed David Russell
Plays Bach.
Russell is a guitarist's
guitarist. His playing embodies unforced, thoughtful musicality, made
possible by an apparently effortless technique—something only a
few players ever attain, let alone harness to the ends to which Russell
has. Success has not spoiled him, however. Talking with Russell, one
gets the impression that he considers himself very lucky and that he
truly loves the guitar and its music. He is a man with clear ideas about
his artistic direction and identity—tempered by humor, a quiet
confidence, and a down-to-earth approach to his art and life. I recently
spoke with him by phone from his home in Vigo, Spain, and he shared
his insights and perspectives on various facets of life as a concert
artist and leading proponent of the classical guitar.
You began studying guitar
with your father at an early age. What was that like?
Russell Studying
is a difficult term because, basically, my father just taught me how
to play when I was a little kid. I have memories of sitting there doodling
with the guitar since way back, since before I was six.
How did your early teachers,
Hector Quine and José Tomás, affect you?
Russell Well, Hector
Quine was not a player, and I was a cocky 14- or 15-year-old when I
started with him at the Royal Academy. Perhaps I would have been better
with someone who could play a lot better than me and who could bring
me down to earth a bit [laughs]. José Tomás was
a fantastic teacher for me and gave me back all my confidence when I
came back to Spain. I credit him as my main teacher, although I didn't
have that much time with him.
You emulated and also
met Andrés Segovia when you were young. Can you describe those
meetings?
Russell I played
for him maybe three times, and the first meeting was actually with José
Tomás, who introduced me. Segovia was very kind to young, talented
students, you know. He was like this grandfather figure. For an hour,
I was sitting in front of . . . well, "One next to God" [laughs],
and he says, "Hey! C'mon kid, don't be so nervous. Just play me something!"
[Laughs] For weeks or months afterward the memory of being with
him was inspiring and kept me practicing. He was great—really very
nice.
You teach master classes
yourself frequently as you tour. How do you approach them?
Russell My job in
a master class is to inspire the student for the next few months. If
someone's only going to play for me once, I want them to leave with
more desire to practice than they came with. If I do that, if they're
inspired, then that'll do them good.
I was kind of hoping
you could fix my tremolo over the phone for me today . . .
Russell [Laughs]
Well, of course, sometimes in the classes you can give someone a pointer
that will fix very small things. Or say someone listens to a
master class for a few hours. By the end of that time, I want them to
know how I think. Then they can use the way I practice, the way I learn
pieces, my approach to everything to do with the guitar and music.
What's your approach
to practicing?
Russell I divide
practice time into several bits, and I often use a stopwatch to make
sure I put in enough time. Sometimes I use the stopwatch to divide it,
because if not, I end up practicing one piece that I love and leaving
the other things. Some practice is purely like athletics: it's to maintain
my fingers, my hand, so hopefully I can play until . . . well, Segovia
played until he was 90. You have to do some careful work that is just
technical. There's a big difference between learning a new piece and
the practice you do when you're not learning any new pieces or when
you're touring. And once I've decided, "OK, this piece is going to go
into memory," I memorize it as well as I can quite quickly, rather than
reading it through a lot of times.
Do you have a specific
method or trick for memorizing?
Russell There is
a nice trick, if you like. Start from the back. Learn the last bar,
and then [work your way forward]. That way, you already know where you're
going in the next bar. Whereas when you memorize from the top, you're
always going from the bit that you know into the bit that you don't
know. By turning it on its head, you struggle with the new bit and then
you ease into the next bit. As you're memorizing it, you know you're
playing this bar because of the next bar that's coming. It really works.
Do you have any pointers
for students who want to work on their right-hand technique?
Russell You can think
of technique as building blocks. If the lowest bricks are not right,
then the top of the wall is going to be shaky. Practice each action,
the very simple action of plucking one finger, like one note: index,
boing on the G. If that's OK, then do i, m. Make sure
m is good, i is good, then i, m, and then m,
i. Then do three notes, four notes, and five notes. It's very easy
to do two notes, but five notes at the same speed becomes not just a
little more difficult, it's a huge amount more difficult.
Make sure that the basics, the foundation to your wall, are perfect.
Go back to the basics almost every day for maybe 20 minutes and don't
start warming up with a lot of difficulties. For example, a two-octave
scale across the strings is about five problems all stuck together.
You're not going to fix any one of them. You may get it going,
but you won't fix anything. So if you want to get rid of say, clatter
on the m finger, which tends to be more clattery as the nail
comes down onto the string, you're going to have to practice i, m
until that doesn't clatter. And find out why it's clattering. A good
way to do it is to actually make it clatter on purpose.
Life as a concert artist
seems very romantic. Do you enjoy touring?
Russell It might
be a romantic idea, but it's quite difficult, particularly if you don't
like traveling. But I love traveling. Maria, my wife, handles the basic
business and goes on almost every single trip with me, which means that
the trips are much more fun. If we go anywhere exotic, we try and spend
a few days between concerts. Some years, I spend about nine months of
the year traveling, but we're trying to reduce it. This year is a special
year. I decided—I'm 50 just now—to take a proper break. So,
I'm having five months without playing.
Having traveled all over,
do you have a best or worst story to share?
Russell In one trip,
I played 48 concerts in Africa in about a month and a half; some days
there were two concerts. In each country I did one or two big concerts.
I went to little schools and universities—all sorts of places.
In one concert—this is the bad experience—I had about
200 people in the concert hall to start with, in a really big concert
hall. During my first four pieces, about 400 more people came in [laughs].
Luckily, I had amplification. And then, during the next four pieces,
400 people left! So first my ego really grew—"Great, they're loving
this!"—and then, you know, they just didn't like it at all [laughs].
The 200 that were there for the beginning stayed, and it ended really
nicely. In Africa, the audience talks to you during the performance,
says things like, "Hey, play that one again. I liked it!" Near the end
somebody said, "Well, can't you sing us something?" And I said, "You
know, I learned to play the guitar because I can't sing." [Laughs.]
So I played another piece, and then they said, "Well, we all sing."
And I said, "Do you know songs that I might know?" It was near Christmas,
so they sang "Silent Night" with me strumming chords onstage. It was
pretty good.
What makes a great performer?
Russell If you think
through all the people my generation and older who have spent their
life performing, they all have quite an individual character. Of course,
you have to play really well and choose good repertoire, but some people
just have really good stage presence, which you must have to be successful.
Of course, every night is not great. But when you play, people should
leave the hall feeling that it was worth it to miss the football match
on TV.
Do you get nervous before
a concert?
Russell Yes, of course.
But if I'm as prepared as I can be, musically, technically, memory-wise,
I'm a lot less nervous. If you concentrate on making people enjoy the
piece, it's easier to step aside a bit. If someone is really not nervous,
it's because they've played a lot of concerts and they're playing almost
every night. Eventually your body just gives up and you don't get any
nerves. You say, "Ah, what's another night." In which case, you don't
really care. Which is not good. [Laughs.]
Do you have a routine
you like to follow on the day of a performance?
Russell I go through
my program carefully in the morning. I make sure that any little kinks
that weren't right are going to be better, and I practice some technique.
In the afternoon, I love to sleep for an hour or two. Touring, I avoid
too many absolutely routine things, though, because it changes too often,
and it's very easy to get into the superstitious thing: "Oh, I had two
bananas and a biscuit and the concert went great, so I'm going to eat
two bananas and a biscuit before every concert." As soon as I find myself
doing the same thing too much, I change it.
How do you decide on
your program?
Russell It's important
to know what you play well. And it's important to have some well-known
pieces as well as a few completely unknown pieces that are really nice.
But what you actually choose to give the audience must have a certain
sequence. The audience should move from one piece to the other comfortably.
Think of a meal. If you go for a really nice meal, you would never start
off with ice cream just before you have a steak, for example. Some pieces
will kill the next piece.
You don't play a lot
of modern music. Why not?
Russell There are
a lot of reasons. I do play some modern music. Each year I try
to include something that's, say, late 20th century, and there are some
pieces people have written for me that I will play next year, but there
comes a time when I have to be honest with my own taste. If I don't
have passion for the music, then I don't feel that I can do it for the
audience so well. And then, why do it?
What do you think of
modern composers?
Russell There are
a lot of guitar composers who are writing really good stuff that is
much more accessible to the audience. Guitarists often understand the
instrument better and try to make it sound beautiful. On the other hand,
a lot of stuff has been written that does not necessarily make the guitar
sound beautiful. The classical music composers of the '60s almost left
the audience behind. Modern art, in terms of painting, moved forward,
but the artists took the audience with them. But in music for some reason,
it hasn't quite taken the audience forward.
You've done a lot of
transcribing. How do you approach it?
Russell I like to
be as faithful to what the composer wrote as possible. But sometimes
you need to take out some notes to make it sound better on the guitar.
But which notes do you take out? I want to transcribe pieces that don't
get hurt by the transcription, by the change onto our instrument. I
have published a few pieces by Bach and a whole lot of Scarlatti. If
someone uses one, they should get hold of the original to see what I've
done, not necessarily just do what I did, but use that as a basis. Decide
whether I was right or not. Don't trust anybody. [Laughs.]
How and why did you choose
the program on David Russell Plays Bach?
Russell These are
some of my favorite pieces by Bach. I wanted to record the Prelude,
Fugue and Allegro [transcribed on page 46]; the Chaconne; and the Fourth
Lute Suite for my own pleasure. These are pieces that I've always loved
and wanted to have my own say with—my own personal view, if you
like.
How do you prepare for
a recording?
Russell For a long
time now all my records have been either one composer or very much within
one style. That gives me a great advantage. Say I decide I'm going to
make a Barrios record. It means that I can study everything he did for
a year or six months and really immerse myself and read about him. Before
I did the Barrios [Cathedral: The Music of Barrios], I went to
San Salvador for concerts. I made sure I got to see some manuscripts,
and I met some old students of his. So when I come to actually doing
the recording, I have a lot more confidence, and I feel that I really
know what I'm doing. Whether I do or not is another matter [laughs].
But at least I feel like, "OK, I now know how I want to play Barrios."
Your 1998 recording
Message of the Sea, which includes your transcriptions of Celtic
traditionals, was a bit of a departure for you.
Russell Yes. I'd
always played some Scottish and Irish music since I was a student. I
had this little thing with a double bass player and we played a lot
of that kind of music. Those transcriptions are things I started doing
a long time ago and then just developed. At first I didn't know if it
was going to be enough for a whole record, so I added a few things like
Fernando Sor's "Variations on a Scottish Theme." It was great fun. Some
day, I'm probably going to have to do Celtic II, because I love
doing it.
Your new album, Aire
Latino, will feature works from a variety of South American composers.
What will be on it? Are there particular highlights for you?
Russell Most of these
pieces have been in my repertoire for years. For this CD, I recorded
some classical and well-known pieces, like Barrios' "Choro da Saudade,"
which is a piece I hadn't done before. There are works much closer to
popular South American music, like "La Quartelera" and "Chopi" by Manolo
Escobar, which is unusual in that you must tune to E major (E G# B G#
B E) for it. I've admired the playing of Jorge Morel for years, so it
was nice to record some of his gems for this album. "Alfonsina y el
Mar," arranged by Jorge Cardoso, has a very strong Argentinian color
and is really lovely, too. The highlight of the disc, though, was the
pleasure of spending many months playing and listening to Latin American
music.
What inspires you to keep
doing what you're doing?
Russell Traveling,
going to new places, that's one of the things. This year my wife and
I were in China and Hong Kong and a lot of other places. I think that
for people who perform in public and enjoy it, it's a bit addictive.
I need to practice because I want to go out onstage again, so that keeps
me going. I want to wake up in the morning and have a reason to pull
out my guitar. I suppose there are other jobs that might be interesting,
but I haven't found one.
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Excerpted from
Acoustic
Guitar magazine, January 2004,
No. 133.
