A unique flute recital / Quartuccio: Formidable!

Recorder professor at the Madrid Royal Conservatory, Pedro Bonet also teaches Baroque Ensemble, Extemporization of Ancient Music and Theory of Interpretation. Further, Bonet has written new repertoires for the flute and baroque instruments, and concertizes as soloist, using original instruments in original baroque programs with various European orchestras.

Belen Gonzalez Castaño earned prizes in both piano and flute. She represented Spain in Belgium’s XVII International Congress of the European Piano Teachers’ Association. She finished with honors in flute (superior level) and took further studies with Bonet.

With such impressive credentials, Bonet and Castaño gave a unique flute recital at the Instituto Cervantes, playing music that figured on ships plying the Galleon Trade Route from Acapulco, Mexico to Manila in the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries. The Galleon Trade was not merely commercial but also cultural and artistic, with missionaries on board using music for evangelization.

The IC recital offered an unusual, fascinating and illuminating auditory experience, enlivened by Bonet’s often amusing remarks which served as guidelines. Bonet and Castaño used flutes which differed from today’s symphony orchestra flutes whose holes are blown sideways. The duo’s flutes were widely diverse in size, the smallest appearing and sounding like piccolos; the largest appearing like giant bassoons. The delicate tonal colors were always soothing and pleasing.

At the start, the compositions almost bordered on tedium, bereft of harmonization and counterpoint, with the flutists playing the same notes.

The program began with pieces by anonymous composers (1556) and by Antonio de Cabezon (1510-1566) followed by a march, a minuet, a motet, a sonata, a negulla — a type of song that imitated the manner Afro-Americans speak — and again works by XVIII century anonymous composers.

As the program progressed, the music grew interesting and absorbing, with melodies and harmonizations becoming more complex.

The dance by Baltazar Martinez Compañon (1735-1787) was followed by Teodorico Pedrini’s Sonata No. 5 in F Major with soloist Bonet rendering its Largo, Allegro, Vivace, Allegro, Adagio and Allegro. Bonet’s flute was relatively small but what marvelous sounds he produced with it! Bonet played each movement distinctively from the other in absolutely virtuosic manner, his superlative breath control in consonance with his nimble fingers rendering diabolically rapid or languidly lambent passages.

Michel Blavet (1700-1768) transcribed Rameau’s Les Sauvages for Harpsichord, as well as Air and Tambourins, and Couperin’s Les Ondes, this evoking the churning ocean, followed by charming airs. Bonet and Castaño exhibited seamless togetherness, perfect accord through twists and turns and tortuously florid passages.

The thunderous applause brought on a 1574 piece, leaving remembrances of an engagingly novel recital.

Director Jose Rodriguez welcomed the audience.

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The formidable Anthony Quartuccio conducted the PPO at the CCP in the highly descriptive Carnival Overture by Dvorak, Buenaventura’s By the Hillside and Debussy’s La Mer. The PPO was in fine form, fully responsive to the firm solid, authoritative baton-wielding of Quartuccio who evoked the sparkling carnival spirit of Dvorak’s piece, and the ocean waves of Debussy’s La Mer. By the Hillside delineated images of the sun rising and setting amidst Nature’s bounty and man’s meditations. Composed solely for strings, the exquisitely lyrical For Lambent Isles by Anica Galindo (b.1981) conveyed masterful restraint and infinitely subtle nuances.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F Minor was given a movingly forceful, eloquent interpretation, the mighty rhapsodic episodes dramatically contrasting with the serene. Gary Graffman’s description of Quartuccio as “Gifted and serious with the highest standards of excellence” was totally deserved.