Spain is a very special country. It was a very conservative Catholic country. Yet for 800 years, it was under Islamic rule and Arabic musical motifs inevitably left its marks. It was also a country where gypsies from Northern India, with their rhythms and jondo traditions found their final destination. It's that strange mix of cultural traditions from India, Arabia and Europe which makes it the birth place of that peculiar musical style which blends an inconsolable sorrow with a desperate joy that many have come to regard as the "soul" of Spanish music :Flamenco. Perhaps for that reason, it has inspired numerous composers to write music about this country with such a rich past. Last Saturday, I had the chance to sample some of the greatest exemplars of such music under a new conductor which I heard for the first time, a very talented, lively, pretty, energetic and masterful young lady from America called Joana Carneiro who has been a guest conductor of Cincinnati Opera, Detroit, Gothernberg , New Zeland, Toronto symphonies and the LA Philharmonic etc.
The first piece of music that night was the Italian composer Giuseppi Verdi's (1813-1901) Overture of La Forza del Destinto,based on a play Don Alvaro o La fuerza del Destino by Angel de Saavedra, a piece he wrote for the city of St. Petersburg, a story above two young lovers Alvaro and Leonora in which Alvaro accidentally killed his lover's father on the eve of their elopement following which a blood feud began between the two families, rather like Romeo and Juliet. It was full of drama and unexpected twists and turns and swings of mood with threatening hammer blows signifying the force of destiny.
The next piece was one which any guitarist worth their salt must have played either in extracts or in entirety: Joan Rodrigo's (1901-1999) Concierto de Aranjuez, with its memorable trumpets, strings and strong, clear and bold yet restrained guitar fireworks which switches to soft, delicate passages amidst woodwind which seems to goad the and guide the guitar passages along. Rodrigo was blind from age 3 but perhaps for that reason, he poured his heart and soul into music making. This piece was written when he returned from Germany to Spain after the Spanish Civil War at the end of 1939. It evokes memories of the bleak Spanish sun-drenched mountains, with its pines, its vines, its streams and its flowers, its white cottages in hillside and valleys. It smells of the freshly cut grass under the scorching Mediterranean sun. Our solo guitarist was Milos Karadalgic, a slim, elegant young man who looks quite Spanish with his long and thick eyebrows and stubs of cut moustache above his strong determined lips and a head of thick black hair. He's an excellent guitarist who fully captures the varying moods of the music, sensitive to the rest of the orchestra. As encore, he gave us one of the contrapuntal studies on the guitar which I had heard before but whose title I cannot now recall.
The second part of the concert began with another famous piece: Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo( Love the Magician) with various passages recalling Andalucian dance themes, especially those of Zarzuela. It's supposed to be an absurd story about attempts to exorcise an inconvenient ghost of the heroine (Candela)'s husband who would appear each time she makes love to one of her new lovers. In the end, Candela decides to ask her beautiful young friend to flirt with the ghost and surprisa! it works. And that was the famous piece at the end, The Danza del fuego, where Arabic influence played by the wind instrument can't be more evident. The other passages in order are: Introduction and Scene, With the Gypsies at Evening, The Apparition, Dance of Terror, The Magic Circle, Scene, Pantomine. if you want to look for Spanish musical motifs, you can't go far wrong with this one.
The last piece of "Spanish" music of the evening comes, with all places, Russia! It's written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908). It's his Capriccio español Op. 34. The composer drunk up his impressions of Spain whilst serving as a naval officer with the Russian navy when they berthed at various Spanish sea ports. As inspector of Naval Bands, he had the chance to study various musical instruments and their use in various types of music. In this piece we hear many traditional Spanish folk and dance melodies which the composer picked up in his studies and his visits. Viva España! Country of Contradictions, Country of Magic, Sorrow and Love and above all, of the Sun. And muchas gracias, Señorita Carneiro y HKPO!
