Katharina Spreckelsen | Oboe

Originally from Germany, Katharina Spreckelsen didn't always think she was going to be a professional musician. Read on to learn about her life in music and the path that has brought her to work with Gabrieli and Paul McCreesh.

I come from a musical family - my grandfather was a choral conductor and pianist and everyone in the family plays an instrument. Some of my earliest memories are of trying to fit two cellos, a gamba, a viola and assorted recorders, flutes and oboes (plus the six of us) into a Renault 4 to play at midnight Mass at our local church. The repertoire was the same every year: the chorales from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. I associate each part with different members of my family, my brothers always fighting over the bass line - but somebody had to play tenor! That music is in my bones.

Aged 10, I wanted to start playing the oboe. As I was quite small and the modern oboe would have asked for much more pressure, my teacher suggested I started on the baroque oboe. I never looked back. I did play the modern Viennese oboe (a highly developed romantic oboe) for some years to expand my repertoire – and I loved playing Brahms, Schumann and Schubert on the piano - but on the oboe I always found my way back to Bach.

I started studying medicine at Göttingen University, vowing that I would never make my hobby my profession, but I missed it too much. I started lessons with two inspirational teachers - the late Michel Piguet at the Schola Cantorum in Basel and Paul Goodwin at the Royal College of Music.

I arrived in London in 1992 and in 1994, auditioned for Paul McCreesh in a freezing church near Euston Station. After playing some Purcell to him he said, ‘I like what you do, but I am not sure how you will fit into my group.’ I am still not sure what he meant, but I must have fitted in somehow because 15 years on I’m still playing for him.

What makes this group distinctive is that Paul and his team take risks. Be it the vast orchestration of our recent Recording of Haydn’s Creation or the one to a part St Matthew Passion. Paul is driven by his instincts, his research and his heart. If I had to single out a favourite Gabrieli Project, it would have to be the whole St Matthew Passion experience - from the full choir tour in 1997 to the recording of the small-scale version in 2002. And I am still holding out for the recording of the Christmas Oratorio!

My personal life also seems to have been closely connected with the group. I got engaged on a Gabrieli tour, we took our 4 month old son Freddie on a wintry tour to Norway bringing us north of the Arctic Circle and a lot of my close friends also work for Paul.

Paul has exacting demands, but since running the London Marathon this year I can now visualise myself at mile 20 with 6 more miles to go when things get a bit tough in rehearsal. I know we’ll get there in the end. And it will be worth it.