US music at its best/Award for Cecile Alvarez

Filfest’s “FIL-AmeriKA” concert at the Insular Life Theater in Alabang last Saturday featured some of America’s most outstanding composers, with eminent American Jefferey Meyer wielding the baton over the FILharmoniKA.

Meyer captured and eloquently expressed the form, substance —the creative simplicity — of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring to which music the High Priestess of Modern Dance Martha Graham choreographed a ballet in 1944. Depicting a bride and groom in pioneering times in their mountain abode, the music evokes folk songs and dances (e.g. The Square Dance) as visitors arrive, contrasting with the invigorating fresh air of the quiet mountainside, the fields and valleys.

The quintessence of Spring in America (not just any spring), the music begins in a nearly inaudible manner, then explodes into loud and lively sounds to suggest the gaiety and excitement generated by the guests, then returns to its muted beginning to depict the bride and her farmer husband alone once more.

Paul Creston’s Concertino for Marimba had Dena Fernandez as a brilliant, exciting soloist, her strokes agile and excessively rapid in the curlicues. Ever alert and mindful of the abruptly changing tempo, she never missed a beat whether in the lyrical or dramatic passages. Meyer gave her admirable assistance, evidencing Creston’s penchant for combining song and dance in typical briskness. Fernandez’s virtuosic performance garnered tremendous, prolonged applause.

This reviewer liked best Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings for its extreme economy of means, sustained intensity and exquisite lyricism. Under Meyer’s baton, the beauty of the Adagio was remarkably palpable throughout. The melodic flow fluctuating in subtly ranging dynamics was given superb treatment by Meyer.

Clarinet soloist Marian Liebowitz fascinated listeners in Norman Dello Joio’s Concertante for Clarinet and Orchestra. Her tones were consistently fluid, flowing and masterfully controlled, and sensitively expressive in the long notes. The orchestra kept the work’s rhythms and harmonies vividly fresh and alive as did Liebowitz who remained unfazed even in the most complex passages.

The audience gave her rousing clamor.

None among the previous composers that night could match Bernstein’s zest, verve and frenzied brio in Three Dance Episodes from the musical “On The Town”, with Meyer eliciting rhapsodic fire from the FILharmoniKA to encapsulate the git-up-and-go spirit of America.

In the course of the concert, Meyer gave glowing praise to the “excellent FILharmoniKA and Gerard Salonga” adding it was a distinct pleasure for him to conduct it. In fact, he consistently asked its members to stand up and take a bow before and after each number. Incidentally, Salonga conducted the American national anthem with more zest and brio than Meyer did in conducting the Filipino national anthem.

Summing up, the concert presented American music at its best, as interpreted with singular distinction by Meyer, the FILharmoniKA, and brilliant soloists Liebowitz and Fernandez.

US Ambassador Kristie A. Kenney, the guest of honor, and Filfest founding trustee and artistic director Jiovanney Emmanuel Cruz gave brief remarks, the former stressing the deepening bonds of RP-US friendship. Raul Guingona served as amusing annotator. Vicky F. Zubiri, Filfest President, welcomed the guests to what turned out to be an imminently successful event, Secretary Lina Racho assisted her.

Award for Cecile G. Alvarez

NCCA Executive Director and Presidential Adviser on Culture Cecile Guidote Alvarez received yesterday the Gawad Gatpuno Antonio Villegas, one of the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan awards, from Mayor Alfredo Lim at City Hall. The award, part of the Araw ng Maynila celebration, was given to outstanding artists who had excelled in their respective fields.

In 2005, Alvarez was bestowed the “Outstanding Manilan” award and in 1972 the Patnubay ng Kalinangan award for spearheading the National Theater Movement, having founded PETA.