Bestiario: Baroque in the Wild

Hens, cuckoos, dogs, cats, soldiers, bugles, furious dances: with its debut album, Bestiario, released on La mà de guido in February 2026, the ensemble Les Impertinences, founded in 2023, explores a seventeenth-century instrumental world that seeks to express emotions without the aid of words. Under the artistic direction of Venezuelan violinist and conductor Pablo Agudo López, equally at home in Italian Baroque, Argentine rock, and the musical traditions of his native country, this ensemble devoted to historically informed performance stands out for its unusual sonic geometry—two bowed bass instruments and a treble line—well suited both to rarely performed repertoire and to original arrangements. From Farina to Biber, from the bass violin to the requinto (a stringed instrument similar to the guitar), Bestiario becomes the manifesto of a wild, fluid, embodied Baroque, in which historical sources converse with improvisation and the traditions of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Your album explores a very free, raw, and virtuosic seventeenth century, in which instrumental music seeks to convey emotions without the aid of text. Why did you choose the image of the bestiary to tell the story of this repertoire, with its hens, cuckoos, dogs, cats, and frenzied dances?

Pablo Agudo López: This is music that has always fascinated me: representational and beastly repertoire. Ever since childhood, I tried to imitate the sounds of crickets and frogs at home. In Venezuelan music, we spend a great deal of time imitating birdsong—hawks, little birds, eagles. When I first heard Biber’s Sonata Representativa, I discovered that there was much more representational, narrative, and programmatic music beyond Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals—and, above all, that it had been written much earlier. There is Schmelzer’s Sonata del Cucco, Uccellini’s L’Emenfrodito, which literally states in the score, “Maritati insieme, la Gallina e’l Cucco fanno un bel concerto,” translated as “Married together, the hen and the cuckoo make a beautiful concert,” or vocal works such as Janequin’s Le chant des oiseaux. And of course there is Farina’s Capriccio Stravagante, the densest work and the centrepiece of our album, which goes even further and seeks to create a true satire of human life, also representing the sound of a soldier’s march, drums, and trumpets. One could even say that it is a satire of the life of musicians of the period, I imagine, illustrating within a single work—like a pasticcio—Renaissance dances, music with a highly sophisticated and serious counterpoint, only to shatter it all immediately with noisy passages, impossible chords, unexpected dissonances, Spanish guitar (asking violinists to hold their instruments like guitars and strum them), flute sounds, and so on. It is truly an illustration of everything a musician of the period did: playing at Mass, then for the king, performing at the opera, dancing, improvising, getting drunk, and the next day having to prepare the music that would be played in church the following Sunday!

All of this belongs to that animal world, to the beast that is the human being: a sensitive and intelligent beast that creates, but a beast nonetheless, inspired by everything around it, because animals create as well. Through their songs and cries, they have always made music for human beings, and this has always been an element widely explored in all the arts—painting, architecture, literature. Human beings have always felt the need to record and illustrate what they see. And this natural world remains part of us, even though today we seem to ignore it. Technology occupies more and more space, exerts more and more power, and we are becoming disconnected from the earth. Contemporary classical composers seek to imitate the sounds of cars, telephones, aeroplanes, and computers, which is fascinating. The same is true of war, which was extensively represented in seventeenth-century music. Yet it is such an incredibly noisy world that I found myself missing silence, as well as the songs of our fauna, which speaks to us and communicates with us. Today, more than ever, we need to listen to it. We felt a need to travel back in time and once again appreciate what is still among us and what, perhaps one day, will no longer be.

You place a great deal of emphasis on the ensemble’s unique instrumentation, with two bowed basses and separate basso continuo parts—a sound structure that is quite rare today. How does this configuration change the way you think about arrangements and the group’s very identity?

P. A. L.: It is fascinating because the examples we have from that period show us just how limitless the possibilities truly were. The only limit seemed to be the sky, offering composers immense freedom to explore the potential of their instruments. We find arrangements from the period, extending all the way to Bach and even into the Romantic era, in which the second violin part of a trio sonata is adapted for viola da gamba, cello, or another type of bowed bass instrument. Faced with these sources, we asked ourselves: if those musicians dared to do this, why should we not make our own arrangements? Even with a second violin in the ensemble, we can continue to highlight this two-bass formation, with each instrument fulfilling a distinct role. This is particularly evident in the piece “Amener” from Biber’s Partita III, for which I wrote a diminished (ornamented) bass line for the viola da gamba, while the bass violin played the line written by Biber. This is something a gambist of the period could have improvised on the spot if faced with such a situation. The results encouraged us to explore further and to seek not only the most extreme emotions, but also the limits of instrumental possibilities, leading us to decide that a violin would not play the second voice in Uccellini’s L’Emenfrodito. To me, it was obvious that Emma, with her five-string bass violin, should play that part, so as to exploit fully the versatility and virtuosity she can draw from the instrument. This practice of arranging and composing opens the mind in remarkable ways, and as I said, the possibilities are endless. And this is only the beginning.

For Biber’s Partita III, you also invite musicians who specialize in Latin American and Caribbean traditions, in order to recover interpretive tools for seventeenth-century dances. How did this dialogue between living tradition and historically informed performance take shape in practice?

P. A. L.: We met Sergio Valdeos and Cali Flores during the peñas, the monthly musical gatherings held at Librería Albatros, an important cultural centre for Spanish speakers in Geneva. These evenings are devoted to improvisation, singing, and Latin American music. Personally, coming from both the world of traditional Venezuelan music and classical music, thanks to my father and El Sistema [national orchestra and choir institution in Venezuela], I have always perceived a deep connection between Baroque music and our traditional music. This connection is constant. Even if many people do not consciously articulate it, it remains a reality, both musicological and cultural, and an integral part of our identity. When we invited Sergio and Cali to perform this work with us, without giving them specific instructions or imposing limits, we were astonished by their ability to interpret it as though they had played it all their lives. It seemed as if it had been composed specifically for them, like a utopian dream bringing together Biber and Latin America. That is living proof that Baroque music still exists in Latin America. It has not become frozen in time as ancient music or an untouchable museum piece. Rather, it transcended time, remaining in a constant state of transformation. It never truly disappeared. Cultural fusion is a baroque phenomenon; it is the coexistence of cultures that have merged into a single whole. Baroque is not only the influence Europe left in the Americas, but also the influence of the Americas and Africa on Europe. It is the ornamentation of languages, improvisation as identity, the vitality of musical traditions, the journey between tradition and innovation, and the necessary impertinence of all those musicians who have endured and will endure forever. For us, it is essential to claim our historically informed interpretation of Baroque music from our perspective as Latin American artists. Through research and imagination, we can make our contribution and leave the mark of our identity.

In the 16th century, the harpsichord of the Emperor of China

If you had to recommend just one track from Bestiario to someone new to the album or the project, which one would you choose to get them in the mood for the record? And, personally, which piece do you prefer, and why?

P. A. L.: I would recommend listening to Farina’s Capriccio Stravagante. It is practically the work that encapsulates everything we wish to express about this repertoire. Personally, despite my efforts, I cannot choose only one piece. For me, there are two: first, Capriccio Stravagante, for the reasons already mentioned, and of course Biber’s Partita III. Not only because Biber is one of my favourite composers and probably the most irreverent violinist in history, alongside Paganini, but also because it is ultimately the epilogue that puts into practice our Latin American tribute to Baroque music.