‘Three Screaming Popes’ in PPO’s next season

Asked how he organizes or envisions the programs he presents as music director-principal conductor of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, Eugene Castillo answered to this effect: "I try to imagine what impact a program will have on the audience. What or how do they think and feel? Will they be scared or frightened when they leave the auditorium to the point they will be moved to do something in the world? The music goes on after a concert and takes a life of its own. Think how a family becomes more loving when it listens to symphonies, how a man holds his wife’s hand as they go home. Every piece evokes some kind of emotion and produces an effect on the listener."

By Castillo’s standards, a music director should know the color and sound the orchestra produces. He now sees the difference between the color and sound the PPO had when he took over and what they are now after his having been at its helm for some two years. "The director must have a vision," he asserted.

Castillo is known to include – or even overload – his programs with very new, avant garde music. How does he explain this? He says he likes to introduce new music to the audience which is so used to the standard classics; new works can widen their musical horizon.

Further, new music can draw the interest or pique the curiosity of the listeners; perhaps, even startle them. He also delights in playing a classical work that has not been heard in a long while. And these types of music should be able to hold together and compel attention.

When the PPO 2005-2006 season opens on Sept. 9, "The Magic of Music" will feature eminent tenor William George as soloist in "Romantic Beginnings". Also to be heard are Alfredo Buenaventura’s Bathaluman, Leighton’s Symphony No. 3 with its Laudes Musicae based on text by Browne, Shelly and Browning, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C Minor or unrequited love (for Clara Schumann).

On Oct. 7, "When Worlds Collide" will present the impressionistic piece "Star" by Takemitsu which will be given its Philippine premiere, and Macdowell’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in D Minor with Ingrid Sala Santamaria as soloist. Incidentally, many pianists want to play with Castillo and the PPO, but as the Good Book says, ‘"Many are called but few are chosen." Hector Berlioz‘s Symphonie Fantastique will end the concert.

The Symphonie, like Brahms’ own, is on unrequited love (involving a very complex relationship), and Berlioz writes this preface to his own long program notes:

"A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination is in love, and has poisoned himself with opium in a fit of desperation. Not having taken a lethal dose, he falls into a long sleep in which he has the strangest dreams, wherein his feelings, sentiments, and memories are translated by his sick brain into musical ideas and figures. The beloved woman herself has become a melody that he finds and hears everywhere as an idee fixe."

On Nov. 11, Margaret Brouwer’s Remembrances and Michael Til Thomas’ From the Diary of Anne Frank will be premiered here with Solita Monsod as narrator. The concert ends with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major to balance the new works.

As a Christmas treat, a free concert at the Folk Arts Theater will have Mark Allen McCoy on the podium for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Suite Christmas Eve, Castelnuovo Tedesco’s Concertino for Harp and Chamber Orchestra with Australian harpist Marshall McGuire as soloist, Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp, with Enrique Barcelo as flute soloist, and Custer’s A Canadian Brass Christmas. Tedesco’s main sources of inspiration, incidentally, are his native Florence and Tuscany, the Bible and Shakespeare.

On Jan. 13, 2006, "From Big Ben to Hollywood" will include "Three Screaming Popes" by Mark Anthony Turnage and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Miklos Rozsa, with pianist Sara Davis Buechner as soloist. Castillo explains that "Three Screaming Popes" which is likely to startle the audience, translates into music a tour of London’s Tate Gallery where the paintings of the three popes are displayed. The dance-like music ends with four loud chords each followed by silence representing a scream. The fourth scream is from the terrified audience. Rozsa’s Concerto is cinematic and calls to mind such Hollywood movies as "Ben Hur".

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ "A London Symphony," although meant to be absolute music, not programmatic, evokes the chimes of Westminster Cathedral’s Big Ben the soft flow of the Thames River, the Houses of Parliament, etc.

On Feb. 10, 2006, Oscar Yatco conducts the world premieres of Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra by Michael Dadap, and Castillo’s own Velocity, a work still in progress which is borne out of creative energy resulting from Castillo’s leaving the US, resettling in this country and travelling in a fast, breathless manner. Other works are Kasilag’s Philippine Scenes, Tapales’ Mindanao Orchids and Maramba’s Symphonic Suite.

March 10 will premiere Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, to be sung by Alison Buchanan, and Amy Beach’s Symphony No. 2 in E Minor "Gaelic". Also in the program: St. Saens’ Bachanale from Samson and Dalila, the Asian premiere of Robert Gehard’s Sis cancons, and Strauss’ Salomé (excerpts).

On April 7, Ukranian Oxana Herasymenko performs in Yuriy Oliynyk’s Concerto for Banduria and Orchestra. Also to be rendered: Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D Minor.