NRC: Double bassist Uxía Martínez Botana wants to 'enrich the soul of society'

Last month she released her debut album Mendelssohn X Files with three members of the Aviv Quartet , the first CD recording in which she appears on the cover. Martínez “hijacked” – wrote a German reviewer – the cellist’s chair with her double bass in Mendelssohn’s string quartet music. As a young woman in her twenties, she learned how to adapt such pieces for her instrument from violinist Gidon Kremer in his ensemble Kremerata Baltica.

She considers the string quartet a pure genre. Ruthless, too. "You hear everything. It's one of the greatest forms of expression humanity has invented; an example of how we can better interact with each other in the social debate. We listen, speak, and are indeed soloists, but we subordinate our egos to the musical whole. You have to trust each other to penetrate what is essential. That's what art is all about: I want to enrich the soul of society."

Martínez is back at her Amsterdam home, from where she travels the world five to six times a month. She tours Europe with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the baroque ensemble of Argentinian cellist Sol Gabetta. She also performs chamber music with leading classical musicians, performs solos, and teaches in Barcelona, ​​the first and only female double bass teacher at a Spanish conservatory.

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