Here and There
Outstanding Pinoys in int’l music world
By Gerry Garcia
TODAY, first day of the Holy Week, is Palm Sunday where the faithful come to church to commemorate Christ’s entry into Jerusalem with processions in which branches of palm are carried… and blessed by the priest. It’s the ashes of these blessed palm, says Star columnist A. Roces, that are later used to mark the forehead of the faithful on Ash Wednesday the better to underline the bottomline: Man is dust, and to dust he will return.
We’ll steer clear of the dust and storm of unpredictable Pinoy politics in the meantime and share in the solemnity of the Holy Week up to Easter Sunday which honors the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day following His crucifixion on Good Friday.
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The mood of the season fortunately coincides with what is ideally perfect for listening to solemn and serious classical music.
We have a comprehensive collection of CDs featuring performances of the world’s great symphony orchestras conducted by equally great conductors, like Bernstein, Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Ormandy, etc.
We have copies of full-length symphonies of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn, including violin and piano concerts played by celebrities like Heifetz, Stern, Serkin, etc.
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In our list of renowned performers on the piano and violin are two Filipinos: pianist Cecile Licad and violinist-symphony orchestra conductor Redentor Romero who, sadly, passed away two years ago here in his home-country Philippines.
Red, with whom this writer had been violin students under the late Antonio Espino in Pantal, this city, during the Japanese’s time, sailed for the USA after liberation days and subsequently became a roving symphony orchestra conductor and, in fact, made recordings of Philippine music played by the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under his baton.
A tribute to Red’s exceptional talent for orchestral transcription is his recording of Mutya ng Pasig (by Abelardo), Pizzicato Caprice (by Buencamino) Cavatina (by Abelardo), Sa Kabukiran (by Velez) and Hating Gabi (by Molina).
Red also had guest-conducted symphonic concerts in Mexico, Russia, but mostly in the USA.
Pianist Cecile Licad, however, out-shined conductor Red performance-wise.
Since her professional debut with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1980, Licad has performed with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy, New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, London Symphony and Claudio Abbado and London Philhamonic with Andre Previn.
(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/here-and-there/)
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