SHE’S LIKE A RAINBOW

The award-winning violinist Elena Urioste has many strands to her career. She speaks to Toby Deller about making her BBC Proms debut, yoga, chamber music with friends, and how she kept the music alive during lockdown

PHOTOS CHRIS GLOAG

‘Not that I ever banked on a Proms debut, but this is exactly the sort of piece I would have hoped to play,’ says violinist Elena Urioste of Ethel Smyth’s Concerto for violin, horn and orchestra. ‘I’m in some ways more comfortable playing music that people haven’t heard zillions of times; in particular, I have always been drawn to both American and British repertoire. So it feels fortuitous to make my debut with this piece, which I’ll probably get to introduce to a lot of people for the first time.’

Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) was ennobled in 1922 for her contribution to music, which included composing the 1910 anthem of the British suffragette movement, The March of the Women. But she had previously been briefly imprisoned for her political activities. As such, she is enjoying something of a renaissance in today’s climate, as musicians and musical figures, galvanised by her example, look to champion her once again.

The Concerto is not new to the BBC Proms, however. It was first performed at the festival in 1927 (with Antonio Brosa as violin soloist), a few months after its premiere (with Jelly d’Arányi), and most recently in 2008 (Tasmin Little). Nor is it new to Urioste, who is joined by horn player Ben Goldscheider for the 25 July 2022 performance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

‘I know it very well and absolutely adore it,’ says American-born Urioste, who may not have lived quite as colourful a life as Smyth, but who describes herself as ‘of Basque, Mexican, Italian, Russian and Hungarian descent’ and is a synaesthete, associating letters of the alphabet and musical notes with colours, which change according to context so that pieces of music take on their own, literally chromatic, palette. ‘It was actually the last thing I played and recorded as a BBC New Generation Artist, right at the tail end of my time on the scheme. I did it with the horn player Alec Frank-Gemmill – we just overlapped on the scheme. I was asked to do it and didn’t really know anything about Smyth as a composer or about the piece, but it seemed like a fun thing to do.’

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective at Wigmore Hall: (l–r) Elena Urioste, Melissa White, Tom Poster, Rosalind Ventris, Laura van der Heijden and Joseph Conyers

Urioste had begun to develop a relationship with the UK as one of the earliest ambassadors (from 2009) for the Londonbased charity Music Masters. Previously she had enjoyed success through the older, Detroit-based organisation Sphinx (she was a category winner in the soloist competitions in 2003 and 2007).

She was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2012 to 2014, which added even more broadcasts and appearances in UK concert venues to her profile; and in 2019 she was asked to go on the Chineke! Orchestra’s European tour.

‘That tour only made me fall more in love with the Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto,’ she recalls of the piece she played. ‘And actually, that was my first proper concerto tour: the same group with the same piece over a couple of weeks. I’d never really had that experience. Usually, you put in all of this work for a concerto, rehearsing it and then performing it once, maybe twice or three times if it’s that sort of series. But touring it and moving around the world together as a group and going on stage in a different place every night – that allows another level of evolution or “marination” of the music. It has a chance to expand and migrate, without you consciously trying to move it in a given direction.’

Circumstances did not allow the recording that was planned off the back of the tour to happen until April 2021. But the album, which also features Coleridge-Taylor’s Romance for violin and orchestra, is due for release this month on the new label Chineke! Records. ‘I always think there’s something nice about actually getting to know the people you are working with and having the musical process be a real journey rather than a one-off. It’s just more satisfying, in a way. I think that’s why a lot of soloists will often confess that the most fulfilling projects they do are chamber music: because it’s democratic, everyone is part of every step of the process. And when you go on stage, yes, there’s a lot of unpredictability, but the surprises are coming from a sense of spontaneity rather than from being under-rehearsed or not feeling familiar with your colleagues.’

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective with bass Matthew Rose (top left)

CONCERT PHOTO WIGMORE HALL. BEACH PHOTO MARIJE JOHNSTON

Indeed, her regular ensemble, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, has allowed her to revisit Coleridge-Taylor on an album released by Chandos in May 2022, this one featuring his Piano Trio, Piano Quintet and Nonet (see review, page 87).

The group first encountered the Nonet when the pianist Tom Poster, who is Elena’s husband, suggested it for a hastily planned reopening of London’s Wigmore Hall in summer 2020. ‘It was lush and romantic and ultimately quite celebratory so it seemed like the perfect piece,’ she says. ‘Anyway, assembling a nonet on two weeks’ notice during peak pandemic was no easy task, but miraculously it all came together. People flew in from Germany, quarantines were managed; it all seemed almost too good to be true. Well, it was too good to be true because a day or two before the concert was meant to happen, Boris Johnson said something to the effect of: “Just kidding, concert halls aren’t going to reopen.” We were utterly crestfallen.’

The performance did go ahead, however, live-streamed for a virtual audience. ‘Wigmore Hall was at the forefront of the live stream mission, if that’s the word. So we went ahead, trying to make it feel as much like a concert as possible: we all brought little stuffed animals to sit in the Wigmore Hall seats to make it feel like we were playing to someone.’

Preparations were also hampered by the quality of the score, with many errors in the edition that had remained uncorrected. ‘There are already so many hurdles involved in playing music by under-represented composers that having the music misrepresented on paper should not be one of them,’ protests Urioste. ‘It makes you wonder: if this were Beethoven’s music, would there be such a careless attitude?’

For the recording, they included two other pieces Coleridge-Taylor wrote while a student at the Royal College of Music. ‘I think his music is just fantastic – there’s a sense of familiarity in it,’ she says, noting that Poster has loved his music since he was a boy. ‘Not that it sounds like anyone else, particularly, but I get this really warm feeling, like I’ve always known it, like it has been with me since my own childhood. It feels very friendly and approachable but not in a cheap or overly simplistic way. It just feels like music that’s always been an old friend.’

Urioste’s duo partnership with Poster also has its roots in the New Generation Artists scheme, as Poster had been an earlier participant as part of the Aronowitz Ensemble. ‘We were paired up to do a recording in 2013,’ she recalls. ‘Certainly from the first notes we played together, just from an instrumental point of view, we felt like kindred spirits. It was so effortless and didn’t need very much in the way of rehearsal. It just felt easy and familiar – also like an old friend. At that point we were both leading very different lives, so we went our separate ways and met again in 2015 to play a recital together at the Roman River music festival in Essex. Then life started happening. But in both of those early instances, it did feel very much like finding a musical soulmate, which you do, here and there, through your professional career.’

Tom Poster and Elena as pictured on the cover on their album To the Spring

GABRIEL ISSERLIS

‘TOM AND I WERE PAIRED UP TO DO A RECORDING IN 2013. FROM THE FIRST NOTES WE PLAYED TOGETHER WE FELT LIKE KINDRED SPIRITS’

Their discs together include a Grieg album, To the Spring (2020), on Orchid Classics – its cover photo captures a scene from her marriage proposal to Poster while they were at the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove, Cornwall (the photographer was in on the surprise). A recent album, From Brighton to Brooklyn (released in January 2022), comprises short concert pieces by British and American composers, while their first release, Estrellita (2018), is a collection of miniatures along the lines of the homonymous favourite by Ponce as arranged by Heifetz. It includes some of Poster’s own arrangements, his enthusiasm for the Great American Songbook matching her fondness for British music.

The pair’s stylistic openness came to the fore during the pandemic when, locked down together, sometimes in the UK, sometimes in the US, they began making informal musical video clips for friends and family. Eventually, Matthew Trusler, founder and director of Orchid Classics, urged the pair to share them more widely, which they did with some initial scepticism.

‘He was right! Lots of random people started tuning in and we were getting these incredibly sweet messages, like: “This is the highlight of my day,” and, “We look forward to this on the porch with a cocktail.” I think, in the end, that that was the very best part of the project: the global community that formed around it. There was this sense of connectedness, even though we were all isolating alone.’

Many were charmed by their particular brand of goofy earnestness, a description she declines to dispute. ‘I think everyone is goofy-slash-serious in their own particular way. That was just the video expression of our own experience of the emotional roller coaster that was accompanying the lockdown journey of many. Because of world events, sometimes we felt we needed to take on a more serious or reflective or contemplative tone, and try to reflect the mood of the world in our musical selection and the way we presented it. And then on some days it felt like everyone could do with a smile, so we thought, “Let’s play some George Michael on the kazoo!”’

Elena has been practising Bikram yoga since 2009

The pair, kazoo still to hand, eventually made a selection from those pieces and arrangements for The Jukebox Album (2021), which won a BBC Music Magazine Award in 2022. Although the online #UriPosteJukeBox had generally been light-hearted, it had resulted in six short original commissions, courtesy of Victoria Robey (founder of Music Masters), and a proper recording seemed in order. Somewhat remarkably, given the lockdown situation, it was one of three studio albums Urioste would end up making while expecting their son, Tico. The Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto and From Brighton to Brooklyn were the others.

‘I’ve always struggled with self-confidence around my violin playing,’ she says, volunteering to share her experience of playing while pregnant. ‘I can recognise that I have certain strengths, but there have always been other aspects of my playing that I’ve just always been self-conscious about. But in the second trimester of my pregnancy, I’d never felt in better shape and more grounded – and, if I’m allowed to say, badass.I don’t know whether that was something molecular that was happening – positive changes to my muscles and my ligaments. I suspected from time to time that because I was so busy growing another person, I just didn’t have excess energy to spend on unproductive emotions. I didn’t get as nervous about playing during that time. My hands just felt fantastic. And I felt like a superhero – for a few fleeting months.’

‘I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’D BE WITHOUT YOGA. THE BETTER MY BODY IS WORKING, THE MORE EFFICIENT I CAN BE, WHICH MAKES IT OK THAT I DON’T HAVE HOURS EVERY DAY TO DEVOTE TO THE VIOLIN’

It was a different story after Tico was born. ‘It took my body a while to get comfortable with the violin, with making the bigger shapes with my arms and back muscles.But also my fingers really hurt for weeks and I was getting very concerned about whether I was going to be able to press my finger pads down. It was absolutely excruciating. It felt like there was a little sac of water on the end of each finger and it wasn’t toughening up.’

She did, however, make it to her first scheduled engagement, eight weeks later, thanks in part to many years as a yoga practitioner. ‘I’ve been lucky – or I can credit yoga for maintaining a good level of comfort and wellness in my body for the past 13 years. So now I use it for ongoing maintenance.

I’m lucky that I’m not desperately trying to correct or heal any big problems at the moment (knock on wood), but it’s definitely what maintains the engine and keeps everything in working order, especially now that I’m bending down and picking up this giant bowling ball of a boy all the time. I don’t know where I’d be without yoga, honestly.’

Having suffered with various forms of physical discomfort through her student years, Urioste was first introduced to Bikram yoga in 2009. The years of practice have paid off in allowing her to manage the demands of professional life.

‘The better my body is working, the more efficient I can be, which makes it OK that I don’t have hours and hours every day to devote to the violin. I’m able to be more efficient and proficient when I do have the instrument, having for years practised prepping the body.’

Taking it one step further, she has been running residential yoga retreats for professional musicians and yoga sessions for students through Intermission (intermissionsessions.com), a programme she set up in 2017 with fellow violinist and Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective musician Melissa White.

They were able to run virtual events through the pandemic but return in person this summer, teaching at the Heifetz Institute in Stanton, Virginia, and then at their retreat home at the Wilburton Inn in Manchester, Vermont. In between the two, she will also host her festival, Chamber Music by the Sea (founded 2016), in Berlin, Maryland, appearing for the first set of live performances there since 2019.

Elena with fellow violinist and yoga practitioner Melissa White

PHOTOS DANIEL CAZAVOS

After that she returns to the UK for a new season. ‘Tom and I have both always enjoyed having very varied lives.We are both a bit reckless by nature and I’m not sure we’d be content doing the same thing all the time, even if it was a really awesome thing. We love the variety, so we’re used to wearing many caps.’ Ahead of them is a series of three concerts in November with Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective at Wigmore Hall, where they are an associate ensemble. There will also be an album of chamber works by the Mendelssohns to promote alongside their Coleridge-Taylor recording, making three releases in nearly as many years for the group following their debut of quintets by American composers Beach, Price and Barber.

The collective was formed in 2017 by Urioste and Poster.‘I would say that within a year or two we started prioritising the creative programming aspect of the collective,’ explains Urioste, ‘making sure that we were playing people whose music deserved to be heard more than once.’ That, as much as the mixedinstrument programming, has become the calling card of the group, as has its commitment to diversity in its player community. ‘We’ve always been rather allergic to a tokenistic approach to diversity in anything, and particularly in our field.But we started thinking that the people we love playing chamber music with the most actually represent a big spectrum of countries, backgrounds, nationalities, skin colours, upbringings. So we thought, “Let’s spend a little bit more time exploring that, playing music we love with people we love.”’