Isidro Albarreal Delgado
Isidro Albarreal is a passionate musician, specialising in early music and historical performance of the violin and viola, currently based in The Netherlands.
Born in Sevilla (Spain), he was accepted in 2012 into the Conservatorium van Amsterdam to complete his Bachelor degree in Baroque violin, studying with Sophie Gent, Shunske Sato and Cornelis Koelmans. He also studied chamber music with Ton Koopman, Alfredo Bernardini, Pieter van Heyghen, Jed Wentz,
Menno van Delft and Eduardo López Banzo; baroque viola with Jane Rogers; and orchestral playing with Sigiswald Kuijken, Giulio Prandi, Paul Dombrecht, Robert Levin and Richard Egarr.
Moreover, he participated in masterclasses with Amandine Beyer, Rachel Podger, Lucy van Dael, Bojan Cicic, as well as teachers from the Juilliard School of New York, Robert Mealy and Cynthia Roberts.
In 2017 he won a scholarship from the Asociación de Amigos de la Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla, which led him to work with Kristin von der Goltz, Rodolfo Richter, Jacques Ogg and Eduardo López Banzo.
Isidro currently plays with such baroque ensembles as Concerto Köln, Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla, Bremer Barockorchester, La Chimera - Eduardo Egüez, Florilegium Musicum, Bach Orchestra of the Netherlands and Amsterdam Corelli Collective, awarding him the opportunity to work with conductors like Enrico Onofri and Riccardo Minasi. With them he has performed in prestigious concert halls such as the Muziekgebouw aan’t Ij, Concertgebouw van Amsterdam, the Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Teatro de la Maestranza and the chapel of the Royal Palace in Madrid, as well as in festivals such as the Grachtenfestival Amsterdam, MABrugge Festival, Utrecht Oude Muziek Festival, Festival Internacional de Arte Sacro of Madrid, Festival de Música Antigua de Sevilla, Festival d'Ambronay, Internationale Händel-Festspiele Göttingen and Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik.
To this day, Isidro has given concerts in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, Slovenia and Japan. His interest about composition started almost from the beginning of his musical formation. He had counterpoint lessons with Alonso Salas and Job IJzerman, but his learning was basically autodidactic. Even though he never composed for professional purposes, he collaborated in several projects which led him to learn different composition techniques and increased his interest in this field.
El Gorrión (The Sparrow)
is a piece inspired by the singing of birds written in the style and form of the French Ouverture.
The slow parts are full of trills and the main motif is drawn with trill, an ''inusual'' fast jump and an appoggiatura that tries to describe the sounds of the birds that come every morning to my balcony where they get their breakfast. The fact that I chose El Gorrión as the name of the piece is mainly emotional. It ́s a bird that I love and that is very common in the south of Spain, where I come from. It ́s a humble creature, but strong and cute, and it ́s directly connected to my childhood and the people I love.
The explanation for the inspiration of the theme for the fugue is less romantic, since I wrote it on a train going to a gig and it just came to my mind. What I had clear from the beginning was that I wanted a rythmical bass, with complementary rythms that give variety and continuity. Inspired by Bach and many other baroque composers, I hardly ever treat the bass as a mere accompaniment, but instead as a main voice that gives the piece the flow and rythm I feel it needs.
Attending to musical aspects, I tried to give a lot of importance to the interaction between all the instruments, and to be sure that all of them have their moment to shine and their moment to accompany. One of the things that I love the most about baroque music is counterpoint. The fact that entire different melodies can work together over the same harmony is something that still amazes me and inspires me after all these years, and I try to convey it in my music. In terms of sonority, I wanted to give the instruments the room for them to have a proper resonance. Therefore, I tried not going to extreme ranges or forcing them to do difficult or virtuosistic things, but rather keep them in a comfortable place for the players that also allows the instruments to resonate. It ́s also one of the reasons why I chose D minor for my composition, since it suits well the required instruments for this year ́s competition, and it allows me to write for them in a more idiomatic way.