Classics V - Program Notes

Romero Guitars

Concierto Festivo for Guitar and Strings (2003)
Ernesto Cordero
Born 1946 in New York, NY

Concierto Festivo was written in 2003. It was first performed at the International Guitar Competition in Allessandria, Italy in September, 2005 by guitarist Eduardo Fernández. The Puerto Rican premiere was given by guitarist Pepe Romero on September 16, 2006.

One of Puerto Rico's outstanding composers, Ernesto Cordero received his musical training in Puerto Rico and from the Real Conservatorio de Musica in Madrid, Spain. He later studied composition in New York with Julian Orbon and in Italy with Roberto Caggiano. While known primarily as a composer who has won numerous awards, he is also a virtuoso guitarist, and has concertized extensively. Since 1971 Cordero has served as Professor of Composition and Guitar at the University of Puerto Rico, and was music director from 1980 to 1997 of the International Guitar Festival of Puerto Rico. Cordero's music, understandably, is centered around the guitar, and his style is suffused with the Afro-Hispanic flavor of the music of the Caribbean. His varied catalogue of compositions includes seven concertos (four for guitar, one for violin/mandolin, one for flute-piccolo and one for the cuatro, the traditional Puerto Rican folk lute), several chamber works that combine the guitar with varied ensembles and numerous solo works for the guitar.

Cordero's Concierto Festivo for guitar and string orchestra was commissioned in 2003 by the University of Puerto Rico to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of its foundation and the re-opening of its Theater. It is written in an eclectic style that combines modern harmonies with contrapuntal elements from the Spanish Renaissance and the compelling rhythms of Afro-Antillean music. Guitarist Pepe Romero writes of the work: "Concierto Festivo (Festive Concerto) is a wonderful bridal feast where the extraordinary knowledge of the guitar and the divine inspiration of the singular composer Ernesto Cordero are wed. We are in the midst of a brilliant concerto, filled with a virtuosity which is always there to serve music, with beautiful melodies and enchanting harmonic progressions, irresistible rhythms that dig within in an essential fashion, transporting us to the beginning of time."

Concierto Andaluz for Four Guitars and Orchestra (1967)
Joaquin Rodrigo (Yo-ah-keen Roh-dhree-go)
Born November 22, 1901 in Sagunto, Spain
Died July 6, 1999 in Madrid

Joaquin Rodrigo was born in the historic city of Sagunto on the east coast of Spain, the youngest of ten children. His family's home stood just a few meters away from the city's musical society, the Lira Saguntina (Lyre of Sagunto). Joaquin would go to listen to the musicians during their rehearsals, and would stay for hours on end until his father or an older brother came to drag him back to reality. When Joaquin was three years old, Sagunto was stricken with an epidemic of diphtheria, which caused the death of many children. Joaquin contracted the disease, and it cost him most of his eyesight. For the rest of his life he would see only light and colors, despite surgical attempts to improve his vision. Joaquin nevertheless learned to play the piano and violin, and his facility on those instruments led to his enrollment at the age of fourteen in the harmony and composition class of Professor Francisco Antich, where he soon began writing music. He was aided in this by his young personal secretary, Rafael Ibanez, an employee of Joaquín's father whose duty it was to read his textbooks to him and to copy down his music. Faithful to the tradition established by Spanish composers such as Albeniz, de Falla and Turina, Joaquín undertook a journey to Paris to enroll in the Ecole Normale de Musique. There he studied composition with Paul Dukas and began a lifelong friendship with Manuel de Falla, who arranged for Joaquin to perform three of his compositions on a gala concert given in Falla's honor at the Rothschild Palace. The concert's success was extraordinary, and Rodrigo's career as a composer was well launched. When Rodrigo and his wife returned to Spain in 1939, they arrived with only two suitcases containing some old clothes, some books and scores and the finished manuscript of the Concierto de Aranjuez. The Concierto, premiered by guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza in Barcelona, belongs among that handful of works that have made their creators world famous overnight. Its success led to commissions for several more guitar concertos. Among these is the Concierto Andaluz for four guitars, composed in 1967 for the celebrated family of guitarists, Los Romeros, and premiered by them in San Antonio in 1968. The cheerful first movement is built on three melodies. The first is a vigorous bolero; the second, introduced by the strings, a suavely lyrical Andalusian tune. The third has the unmistakeable bravura of a bulerias. The dark second movement begins with an ornately mournful tune above a steadily striding scale accompaniment. There is a lively, more rhythmic middle section, then, after a virtuosic and inventive cadenza for the solo quartet, the opening tune returns over a multiple layering of quick and slow scales. The vibrant finale has two themes, a strumming, light-hearted sevillanas and a vigorous jig-like zapateado.

Suite from The Three-Cornered Hat (1919)
Manuel de Falla
Born November 23, 1877 in Cadiz, Spain
Died November 14, 1946 in Alta Gracia, Argentina

The Three-Cornered Hat began its life as a two-act pantomime entitled The Corregidor and the Miller's Wife, composed in 1916-17. Falla expanded the work into its present form, a two-act ballet, in 1918-19. This version was premiered by the Ballets Russes, conducted by Ernest Ansermet, on July 22, 1919 in London.

After its premiere at the Alhambra Theatre in London, one critic commented that, "in his music for The Three-Cornered Hat, Manuel de Falla has treated the orchestra like a gigantic guitar." Many non-Spanish composers have fallen in love with the rhythm, color and passion of Spanish music. Debussy, Ravel, Chabrier, Copland, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka, Lalo, Saint-Saens, Bizet, even Gershwin (to name a few) have all tried their hand at writing "Spanish" pieces. None of them so authentically conveys the full-blooded essence of life on the Iberian Peninsula as does Falla. He does for his native music what Smetana and Dvorak did for Czech music, what Kodály and Bartok did for the music of Hungary, and what Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov did for Russian music: he integrates it into the European symphonic tradition without sacrificing the essence of its folk-idiom, thereby enriching both traditions.

Falla, like many Spanish composers, learned much of his craft in Paris where he spent seven years, making the acquaintance of composers such as Dukas, Ravel and Debussy. He returned to Spain in 1914 with a mastery of orchestration and harmonic techniques strongly influenced by his exposure to French music. There he completed a piece for piano and orchestra he had begun in Paris, Nights in the Gardens of Spain, in 1915. The Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev was impressed by it and wanted to use it for his dance company, the Ballets Russes, but Falla refused permission for this, saying that he wanted to write a new score based on the famous novel by Spanish author Pedro de Alcarcon, The Corregidor and the Miller's Wife. The First World War delayed the realization of the project, but Falla continued working on the piece, and it was produced in 1917 in Madrid as a pantomime with music. Diaghilev, who traveled to Madrid to see the work, was enthusiastic. He suggested certain modifications (including the introduction into the score of a melody he'd heard a Spanish fiddler play on the streets of Madrid) and, by the time Falla finished the full-scale ballet, the war was over and Ballets Russes was again in operation. Diaghilev assembled some of the top talents of the day for the premiere in London. The choreographer was Leonid Massine, Pablo Picasso designed the sets and costumes, the dancers were international stars, and the conductor was Ernest Ansermet. Picasso finished painting the drop curtain that would lift to reveal the opening scene of the ballet during the dress rehearsals. Diaghilev was so entranced by this curtain that he begged Falla to compose an orchestral introduction that could be played while the audience admired Picasso's creation. The composer, burning the midnight oil, completed this task in 24 hours, creating a dramatic and striking prelude for trumpets, drums, soprano and castagnettes. The ballet was an overwhelming success, and Falla's music has become a well-loved part of the symphonic repertoire.

The story is set outside a mill surrounded by vines covered with grapes. The Miller and his beautiful wife are working happily watering the garden and picking grapes when a procession approaches. It is the village police commissioner, the Corregidor (whose badge of office is a three-cornered hat) with his retinue. The Corregidor's roving eye lights upon the Miller's wife. He is taken with her beauty, but she scorns his advances and mocks him by dancing a seductive fandango, while dangling some grapes in his face. He chases her around until he falls down, at which point the Miller (who has been delightedly watching all this) appears and elaborately helps the Corregidor up, dusting off his clothes and handing him his tricorn hat. The Corregidor plots his revenge; that evening, while the Miller and his wife are celebrating St. John's Night by dancing a seguidillas with their neighbors, Constables interrupt the dancing to place the Miller under arrest on a trumped-up charge. Later, when the cuckoo clock (in the clarinet) strikes nine, the Corregidor appears; with the Miller out of the way, he is ready to console the Miller's lonely wife. He attempts to seduce her, but she eludes him again, and in the heat of the chase, he falls into the mill stream. She runs away laughing and the chagrined Corregidor takes off his wet clothes and hangs them on a chair to dry. Now the Miller, who has escaped from jail, reappears and, seeing the Corregidor's clothes in his house, jumps to the worst possible conclusion. He angrily puts them on, leaving a note that he is on his way to seduce the Corregidor's wife in retaliation. The Corregidor finds the note and, donning the Miller's clothes, rushes frantically after him.

The final scene is a madcap riot of confusion. Constables rush in, in hot pursuit of the escaped Miller just as the Corregidor is coming out of the mill in the Miller's clothes. They tackle the Corregidor. The Miller's wife returns, thinks they are dragging her husband away, and goes on the attack. The neighbors come in to finish their St. John's Night party by dancing a jota, and finally the Miller reappears, pursued by still more police. When he sees his wife defending the Corregidor, he becomes furiously jealous and attacks the Corregidor. During the final confused melee, the true identities of the two men are revealed and the Miller and his wife are reconciled. The Corregidor is made a laughingstock by the crowd and, in true Spanish tradition, is mocked by being tossed in the air on a blanket.

Conga-Line in Hell, Op. 40 (1993)
Miguel del Aguila
Born September 15, 1957 in Montevideo, Uruguay

Conga-Line in Hell was premiered in its original version for chamber ensemble in 1993 at the Bing Theater, Los Angeles Museum of Art by te Lo-Cal Composers Ensemble.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Miguel del Aguila began private lessons in piano and music theory when he was six years old. His formal musical training began in 1967 at the Escuela Municipal De Musica in Montevideo and continued at the Conservatorio Audem and Conservatorio J. S. Bach. Aguila moved to the US in 1978, became an American citizen and continued his musical studies. After graduating from The San Francisco Conservatory of Music he traveled to Vienna to study piano and composition at the Konservatorium Der Stadt Wien. He spent ten years in Vienna, during which time he was active as composer, pianist, and music teacher, then returned in 1992 to live in Southern California. He has won numerous awards and fellowships and has been called "One of the West Coast's most promising and enterprising young composers". Aguila's extensive catalog includes opera, orchestral, choral, solo and chamber works as well as incidental music for theater and film, and has been widely recorded. He was conductor and music director of California based Ojai Camerata from 1996 to 2000, and is founder director of the West Coast composer's group Voices. From 2000 to 2004 Aguila spent his summers as resident composer at the Chautauqua Institution Summer Festival in New York. He is currently composer in residence with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra through a Meet The Composer's Extended Residences Grant.

Aguila wrote these notes about Conga-Line in Hell: "[it] began in my imagination as the visual image of an endless line of dead people dancing through the fire of hell. I gradually started hearing the music, and Dante's Paolo and Francesca da Rimini story soon became part of the scene. This inferno is humorous, sarcastic, grotesque and at times also terrifying. I rely mainly on the dramatic and expressive qualities of rhythm to convey the evil forces that govern my imaginary hell. As thematic material I primarily use rhythmic claves (Spanish for clef or key) as they are used in Latin American music: a sort of 'rhythmic tonality' to which harmony and melody must conform. The rhythmic pattern of the conga dance beats throughout the piece and is at times distorted into a 13/16 pattern. It employs unusual percussion, unusual rhythmic structures and instruments are often playing at their most extreme registers. The piano is used 'obbligato' as a sort of metronome, very much like the harpsichord of the old Baroque times." Bernard Holland wrote of the work in the New York Times in 1994: "The closest thing to a fixed style was Mr. Aguila's delicious send-up of Minimalism during his Conga-Line in Hell. Here, sequences in stepwise motion career out of control, a comic device Haydn also used to wonderful effect. Mr. Aguila's deft tribute to the conga rhythm had genuine wit, its parodies of Latin America's seedier pop styles delicious and never overripe."