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| Manila Symphony Orchestra conducted by Prof. Arturo Molina |
The Manila Symphony Orchestra,
one of Asia’s oldest orchestras, launched its 2018-2019 concert season, billed
as Year of the Titans, featuring its
most diverse lineup to date, both in terms of music programming and guest
artists.
MSO’s “titanic” concert season
opens with The Color of Music
happening on June 3, 2018, 6:00 PM at the Theatre at Solaire. With the
orchestra’s music director and principal conductor Prof. Arturo Molina at the
helm, this concert will feature Richard Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan
und Isolde, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures
at an Exhibition and Antonín Dvořák’s Cello
Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191 with German cellist Clauss
Kangiesser as the soloist.
On July 29, 2018, 6:00 PM at the
Theatre at Solaire, guitarist Noli Aurillo and Filipino band Silent Sanctuary
join the MSO led by Prof. Molina in Rockestra
2018, a rock symphony concert. Two members of Silent Sanctuary, violinist
Kim Ng and cellist Anjo Inacay were former members of the MSO.
The MSO and Prof. Arturo Molina
along with surprise guest artists bring film music to the concert stage with Silver Screen Symphonies on September
16, 2018, 6:00 PM at the Theatre at Solaire.
Then it’s off to the Meralco
Theater on November 30, 2018 with Beethoven
Redux featuring German based Indonesian violinist Iskandar Widjaja and
Singaporean conductor Darrell Ang. This concert offers a double dose of Ludwig
van Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D
major, Op. 61, first in its original form and then followed by the redux version
featuring a new solo violin part composed by Jeffrey Ching.
The season wraps up with The Titan on January 26, 2019, 8:00 PM
with Prof. Arturo Molina leading the MSO with a performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major ‘Titan’ and
Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G
major with pianist Victor Asuncion as the featured soloist. The venue for
this concert will be announced later.
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| Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra |
The season launched also
presented the Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra, the youth orchestra arm of the
MSO formed back in 2014. Last year, the MSJO won 2nd Prize at the 11th Summa Cum Laude
International Music Festival held at the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in
Vienna, Austria. This July, the young members of the orchestra return to Vienna
and hope to do better at the same competition before embarking on yet another
European tour.
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| MSO Music Academy students |
Aside from performing, members of
the MSO also teach at the MSO Music Academy (also established in 2014) that now
has three branches: Circuit Makati, Glorietta 5, and in Taft Avenue. Young kids
and even adults can enroll there and enrich their lives with music.
Apart from the concert season,
the MSO also perform regularly at the Ayala Museum via the Rush Hour Concert series. These concerts were designed as a way for
people in the Makati area to spend an hour or so watching an orchestra
performance comfortably at the museum rather than being stuck on the road in
rush hour traffic.
Right after the season launch, I
was able to do just that with East-West,
a Rush Hour Concert in celebration of the 100th Birth Anniversary of
Dr. Lucrecia Kasilag, National Artist for Music. This concert featured
concertmaster Gina Medina-Perez and pianist Ingrid Sala-Santamaria performing music
by Kasilag alongside that of Johannes Brahms.
Kasilag’s music hasn’t been
performed as often as Brahms in here and maybe that’s why Gina Medina-Perez’s
rendition of the outer movements of Kasilag’s Violin Concerto, LK 241 sounded exotic to me. This was truly an odd
realization considering how the opening piece, Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 WoO1 was very likely exotic music from a
German’s perspective. I guess that Kasilag’s use of fourth intervals instead of
the usual third with the chords lent more to the exotic feel of this piece. I also
remembered that it’s been almost a decade since Gina Medina-Perez performed
this concerto at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. This only shows how
rarely indeed are Kasilag’s works heard on stage.
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| Pianist Ingrid Sala Santamaria |
Despite the inclusion of
traditional Philippine percussion instruments, the first movement of Kasilag’s
Divertissement for Piano and Orchestra sounded less exotic to me. Legendary
pianist Ingrid Sala Santamaria’s piano parts were mostly single voiced played
in octaves and it had an effect on me as if the piano was among the traditional
percussion instruments.
Continuing the juxtaposition of
pieces by the unlikely paired composers, Santamaria continued with the
latter half of Brahms’ Piano Concerto
No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83. I was able to savor the solo cello in the
third movement but I wish that I was able to see her perform this in its
entirety last October.
Remarkable to note that she is
the only local pianist I could think of right now who has done a significant
number of high profile concerts over the past several months. This only made me
wonder which pianists from the millennial generation could follow in her
footsteps and have a long career.
The final Kasilag piece for the
night was the extremely accessible Philippine
Scenes. This three movement piece (Mountainside, Lullabye, Festival) was very
much Filipino in spirit that I had a major turnaround with Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 6, WoO1 that closed
out the concert was now the one that felt foreign and exotic to me.
The agony of travelling out of
Makati has prevented me from catching most of the MSO’s past Rush Hour Concerts
(or any other concert at the Ayala Museum) but I was extremely glad to catch
this one since it gave me a generous dose of Kasilag’s music. Recordings of her
music are rare and not that easy to purchase and live performances of it are
even rarer. This only made me anticipate upcoming tributes to her in
celebration of her birth centennial anniversary.
And it goes without saying that I
also eagerly await seeing the Manila Symphony Orchestra on stage once again
after missing their previous season entirely. See you at the concerts!
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