Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Manila Symphony Orchestra launches diverse Year of the Titans 2018-2019 concert season

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.

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.

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.

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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