Delighting in chamber music

Tremendously have I enjoyed a couple of music concerts over the past fortnight, thanks to Ma. Victoria F. Zubiri, President of FilFest.

The first was the FilFest Allchestra concert at Insular Life Auditorium in FilInvest on July 30, featuring the excellent pianist Rudolf Golez and the Clarion Chamber Ensemble with David Johnson.

It was the fourth of this year’s Allchestra series, now on its 4th season, and which I only became aware of last April when I happened to be invited by a lovely lady from Alabang for a concert that featured violinist Joseph Esmilla. That was most enjoyable, too, and I wrote it up in this space, thus guaranteeing future invites from Madame Vicky.

For the July 30 concert, the program featured Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s Septet for Piano, Winds and Strings in D minor, Op. 74; Frédéric Chopin’s Andante spianato et grande polonaise Brillante, Op. 22; Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1, S.514; and Conradin Kreutzer’s Quintet in A Major.

The Insular Auditorium or theater has excellent acoustics and accommodates an audience of about 800 in tiered seating rows, providing for an intimate setting — thus perfect for soloists and chamber groups.

A recent feature, apart from the elegantly dressed stage (dressed with suitably placed flower arrangements), is a video screen placed high at the back of the stage, allowing fixed cameras to capture detailed images of, say, a pianist’s fingers on the ivories, or a violinist’s rapture of face.

Thus could the audience watch the masterful Golez —boyishly handsome as some matrons beside me couldn’t help but swoon — sway gently before the keyboard right on stage, under perfect warm lights, as well as in black-and-white close-up on screen, if in reverse angle, his look of innocence often melting into unbridled passion.

Another welcome feature was the speaker before a side-stage lectern who served as annotator and presenter of each piece. That night, it was Russell Brandon, the Davao-based Scottish pedagogue who coaches Golez. He was most charming, articulate, knowledgeable and witty, prefacing each musical piece with cogent notes. And he succeeded in gently instructing the audience that applauding between movements wasn’t quite cricket, since it detracted from an appreciation of the structural flow of the composition.

Master Brandon also prepared the audience for Golez’s transition from a superb soloist to an ensemble musician — a different challenge. Thus, after interpreting Lizst’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 with gusto, Golez also acquitted himself in fine form as a team collaborator in chamber music.

The Clarion Chamber Ensemble headed by flautist David Johnson also delighted everyone with its fine music that night.

Memorable was the beautiful Kreutzer Quintet in A Major for Piano, Flute, Clarinet, Viola and Cello.

And to top it all off, served as an encore was a haunting tango piece by Astor Piazzola: Milonga del Angel — which I found myself humming most sadly indeed, all the way to the parking lot. 

Last Monday, Madame Vicky alerted me for a special, even more intimate, benefit concert held at the Prestige Cars BMW showroom on Pasong Tamo Extension. The BMW Cultural Concert Series featured “Trio Con Brio” with Joseph Esmilla on violin, Rudolf Golez on piano, and Victor Coo on cello. 

And was I glad I didn’t regret missing it, while repaying the favor from the dear Alabanger and care-giving date who had introduced me months ago to such sterling intimacy of music.

While the BMW showroom wasn’t exactly an ideal venue, with its level floor for makeshift seats numbering about a hundred, and its low ceiling and stark-white lighting that necessitated the use of personal fans in aid of the air-con, the musical program presented by the three young men certainly warmed us all up in a positive way.

Café Music (Allegro, Andante Moderato, Presto) by Paul Schoenfield drew the dynamic vigor of youth from the trio — jazzing up the contemporary music as a provocative waker-upper.

I’m glad the musicians also decided to interchange the other two program numbers, with Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Opus 49 being moved up as the middle number, thus serving a fitting finale with the dissonantly languorous Piazzolla pieces: Concierto para Trio, Soledas, and La Muerte del Angel.

One image that stuck to mind as the haunting tango pieces were played, so energetically and exquisitely indeed, was the view I was privileged with, seated on the rightmost side of the third row, close to the thick glass that separated the showroom from the outside world. Turning away from the trio, I could glimpse a yaya standing on the pavement in white uniform, handling her cellphone, occasionally gazing in and maybe wondering what the music was all about that seemed to entrance the generally well-heeled audience. Or could she even hear some strains?

Passing strange, too, was the accidental collage of reflected images and a parked BMW on the driveway, plus the street beyond. For a while there, a reverse image of Esmilla seemed to be sitting on the Bimmer’s hood, with Coo plucking at his cello right on the front bumper, while Golez appeared to be tinkling the ivories on Cloud 9, hovering above Pasong Tamo Ext. with its jeepneys and other vehicles sallying back and forth.

Joseph Esmilla, Rudolf Golez, and Victor Coo as an electrifying “Trio Con Brio” at the BMW showroom

Only in the Philippines can we be rewarded with such a mirage of an intersection between reality — rain-soaked as it was that evening — and the ineffability of wondrous music.

Again, fittingly if not ironically, Tubig at Langis by George Canseco served as the first encore, while the second offered counterpoint irony: Oblivion by Piazzolla.

I just love how these young musicians seem just as enraptured by the Argentine Piazzolla’s revolutionary tango music — so elegantly yet weepily heart-rending as inelegant reality — as I have been since hearing that encore at Insular Theater two weeks previous.

A wonderful evening it was, capped by a buffet of paragon dishes by Madame Vicky’s own daughter, our fellow-columnist here, Stephanie Zubiri. It also gave me a chance to meet, shake hands, and have photo-ops with Joseph, who was cued in by a common friend about the previous column that had raved over his concert last April, and Rudolf, who proved as charmingly Cebuano as…

“Usahay naman as encore next time?” we prodded. He smiled, nodded, and breathed that word: Usahay. Now we look forward to another evening, when that beloved classic from our South is rendered as a sad, baaaad tango, à la Piazzolla.

Dear Madame Vicky, we know you can make it happen. Thank you for the delights thus far.