Villaescusa del Bardal (EFE).- The pianist José Imhof was surprised by the state of alarm in Villaescusa del Bardal, “the town of the storks”; he spent the long days of confinement there and decided that he was not going to return to Madrid. Three years later he is still in the south of Cantabria, preparing the premiere in Spain of a Philip Glass concert while planning to expand his music school with summer residences.
After almost 25 years in Madrid, studying, working and teaching, Imhof now lives in the house that has belonged to his family for generations. It is a 17th century building, located next to a viewpoint from which you can see the succession of stork nests that have given Villaescusa its nickname, a town with 62 registered inhabitants. Although they seem even less.
In that house, which conserves in the patio the stones of the floor of a medieval tower, he spent his summers. For years he has been restoring it on weekend getaways, until the confinement arrived and “luckily” he caught him in the town. “That forced pause, that obligation that we all had to stay at home, made me go back to childhood,” he tells EFE in the studio that he has created in the old bakery of the house, where his ancestors baked bread.
“Within the drama I was happy once again to remember the sound of the morning, the birds, the tranquility… And I decided that I was not going to return to Madrid, that I had to find a way to stay here. And it’s not easy because in a place like this you can’t take nourishment from the environment. In Madrid you have an audience, here you have to try harder, awaken creativity more, ”she explains.
In the end, the experience has resulted in more hours of study and more concerts but fewer classes, although he has students every day in his studio and from a distance, from Cantabria and Madrid.
“I have a great passion for teaching, I want to teach all my life”, he affirms, and clarifies that although there are fewer students, the classes are more relaxed and longer. You don’t have to stick to the exact time. “Everything goes very fast and classical music doesn’t work with stress, it needs calm. The same calm that I experience here is what I want to transmit to my students ”, she assures.
a german grandfather
José Imhof hopes to have the wing of the house that he is restoring ready in the summer to receive students in a project that combines teaching and coexistence, a format that already exists in other parts of Spain, but is much more common in France or Germany, a country to which it is attached.
And it is that the foreign surname that accompanies his name, so Spanish, he inherited it from a German engineer with an adventurous life who left for Uruguay but ended up living in the Cantabrian region of Campoo, married to his grandmother.
His German grandfather, who died very young, played the piano and his widow kept the instrument “as in a time capsule,” he recalls. He was so fascinated by it as a child that he ended up dedicating himself to music.
The path he chose also helped him cope with confinement: “I had a strong occupation and also had a rule: I did not enter here in pajamas, I always just showered and sometimes I put cologne on. He came to work and could be ten hours ”.
He believes that in Villaescusa he has even changed his way of playing. “I listen to recordings from a few years ago and now I like it better, I am a little slower but a little more precise in my playing. I am more convinced of the repertoire. Perhaps this calm allows us to listen to you and know: I just want to play this ”, he points out.
Philip Glass and the Baroques
A mainstay of that repertoire is Philip Glass. On his latest album, his second, he performs his five metamorphoses and a collection of studies, and next Thursday, March 30, at the Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria, he will premiere his third concert for piano and string orchestra in Spain, together with the Symphony of the Cantabrian and under the baton of Paula Sumillera.
The idea comes from afar. Imhof proposed it to Sommillera years ago but they realized that the pianist Simone Dinnerstein had the exclusive, then the pandemic came and they did not resume the project until last December, already released the rights.
“It transmits happiness to me, it transmits calm to me”, he confesses about this concert by Glass, an “inexhaustible” composer who has just turned 86 and “has not stopped and is not going to stop”. The third movement is dedicated to the Finn Arvo Pärt and, in his opinion, is “the heart of the work”. With both ends a generation that still follows the line of the 20th century, points out the Cantabrian pianist, in whose “fetish” repertoire minimalism and baroque coexist.
“It’s like those couples who are very different from each other but complement each other very well”, he maintains about that very personal combination that he will propose again in a concert at the Cartuja Center in Seville on May 30.
In the silence of Villaescusa he admits that he misses being able to get up one morning, take the bus and enjoy a museum or immerse himself in the vibrant life of the Gran Vía.
In the village, he admits, “sometimes you have to face the fact that your desire to socialize is not possible” and also the winter is very long and very cold. “When the day goes out so soon it becomes hard… But then spring is appreciated”, she concludes.
Lola Camus