A Sison of love songs

MANILA, Philippines - Love should be for all seasons and there is, thankfully, a Sison who once wrote love songs and goes on to believe that love shouldn’t be limited to some solitary season. George Sison’s compositions, as well as a precious collection of memorable ones from great songwriters, were recently performed in a concert aptly titled Only Love Remains.

Performed is also the apt word to describe what was done to Sison’s compositions in that four-night event at Manila Peninsula’s Rigodon Ballroom recently. The songs were not just sung, particularly by operatic balladeer Bo Cerrudo, but others were rendered on the grand piano by Raul Sunico, artistic director of Cultural Center of the Philippines no less, as well as dean of the University of Santo Tomas Conservatory of Music. Still others were recited as poems on by thespians Roselyn Perez and Lloyd Young.

Even in theater-loving Manila, that’s rarely done. Songs are, by definition, always sung, though in the olden days, they were first recited and sung only much later. In the concert, such Sison compositions as It’s Not Easy To Be Strong, It’s So Lonely To Love You, I Have Loved You were recited first, then played on the piano by Sunico while lyrics were flashed on a giant video screen for the audience to relish. What moving triple exposures those renditions were, perfectly reflecting love’s being multi-sensorial, multi-dimensional. Looks like only consummate theater artist Freddie Santos — who directed the concert — could easily conceive such multi-layered treatment of love songs and great lovers through the ages.

In the opening segments of photos of great lovers (such as Romeo and Juliet, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine, Tristan and Isolde, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) glowed on the screen as Cerrudo belted out love ballads and classics from Hollywood films, from Broadway, and from the likes of Michelle Legrand. Almost all throughout the concert, every song was performed to a backdrop of a thousand starlights that sparkled and changed colors every now and then. At times, the stage was in passionate red. In gentle pink, or in lovely violet. Truly, love is a many splendored thing, as Cerrudo oh-so-soaringly sang.

To connect the songs with present-day lovers, the concert featured short video discourses on love from beauty queens (Gloria Diaz, Margie Moran), social reconteurs (Johnny Litton, Timmy Yap, Armida Siguion-Reyna), and easily-recognizable personalities Mike Toledo and Rima Ostwani. To get their discourses going, they were asked to answer the questions “Who was your first love?” “Who is your last or current love?” and to complete the statement “Only love remains when…”

Music reverberated not just as songs and instrumentations but even as spoken words. Sison’s lyrics easily render themselves to oral reading because they are naturally poetic. They can really be appreciated as poetry. They are innately — perhaps, even instinctively, as most poets do it — aural. Listen to one:

It’s Not Easy To Be Strong

It’s not easy to be strong when the heart says surrender

It’s not easy to be strong when love still remembers

The many trips we took among the stars…

It’s not easy to be strong now with your smile so bright

It’s so easy to go wrong when once more everything seems right…

But now when all our tears taste like wine,

It is not easy to be strong.

And here’s another:

If I Had To Live My Life Again

…And when the breeze touches your face

I shall know its coolness by your warmth

So when the stars brighten with your gaze

I shall know the night by your glow…

And when the flowers of May are yours

I shall know their sweetness by your scent.

So when the birds sing for you alone

I will know them always by your songs.

And yet another:

When Eyes Are Filled With Tears

It isn’t easy for the heart to sing

when eyes are filled with tears,

when the pain shows through in a smile…

I see you in every face

Your touch is every hand

Your lips in every kiss

You’re every voice

I hear…

Sison’s songs had been recorded decades ago by Pilita Corrales. They were recorded anew recently in a double CD album, vocally by Cerrudo and on the piano as solos by Sunico. Those who have listened to the recent album (which also goes by the title Only Love Remains) and then came to the Manila Pen concert were pleasantly surprised to discover that Sison’s songs were more elaborately musically arranged for a live audience by young maestro Rodel Colmenar of the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra which he conducted that night to accompany Cerrudo’s colorful and breathtaking singing. (In the album, the songs’ arrangements were done by music arranger par excellence Noel Espenida).

But take note, it was not only Pilita who recorded Sison’s love songs. Even the world-acclaimed The Platters did, specifically What Name Shall I Give You My Love, which the group featured in The Magic Touch, which turned out to be one of their best-selling albums. What Name Shall I Give You My Love sounds equally soothing even when just recited like a poem. Listening to it is like you’re listening to your own heart beating in love:

What name shall I give you, my love?

A drop of rain

A rising sun

A tender kiss

And yet you are my lonely street

You are my doubts

You are my joys

and all my fears

My little dark corners

and the cold breeze that blows

my every pain

my every dread

and every thorn I tread

What name shall I give you, my love?

a gentle guide

a hand to hold

a heart to trust

And yet tearful moments are what you are

My love is such

It isn’t much

But it’s all that.

Pilita also recorded the song in Spanish, with Sison’s lyrics, too, of course. Thus in the concert, which had Asia’s Queen of Songs as special guest, she sang in a magnificent duet with Cerrudo the Spanish version while Cerrudo did it in English. (Love spoke many languages in the concert. Cerrudo also sang partly in Italian Sison’s If I Had My Life To Live Again, with lyrics courtesy of younger sister Marla who made Italy her home upon marrying a native of that fabulous country. The versatile Cerrudo also sang the Tagalog ditties, one of them Sison’s Tayo Din Naman Ay Umibig, the song of Ishmael Bernal’s award-winning Daluyong rendered in soaring operatic style).

Pilita had a solo segment, of course. And she couldn’t help but scintillate in her inimitable style of crooning songs of yesteryears that made much of the audience feel young once more and re-live the meanderings of passionate loves. She crooned a medley of love songs that included Historia de Un Amor, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, My Prayer, Only You and Great Pretender.

Produced and presented by TOPPP-Rated Productions and Rustan’s Essences, Only Love Remains dazzled in its four-night run Manila’s gliteratti as well as some members of the diplomatic corps.

Congratulations, George, for a most magical musical evening!