This paradox came from Michelangelo, who could express himself with a quill almost as much as with a chisel. He was astonished by the god-like power of the artist such that after having finished his Moses, he struck the knee with a hammer making a dent in the stone to prove to himself that it was not warm flesh but only cold Carrara marble.
Even when the artist believes that perfection is unattainable, still he strives to come as close to it as possible.
Kayumanggi, the concert presented by the San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts at the CCP Main Theater, was the kind that displayed the Filipino musical gift – that of the San Miguel Master Chorale and the San Miguel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Maestro Eudenice V. Palaruan – in abundance.
The first part of the program featured religious a cappella pieces by Filipino and other Asian composers, which the SMMC delivered with conviction and intensity of feeling. Among these works was Ryan Cayabyab’s setting of the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi – "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace." – a fervent plea for peace.
The second part presented Cayabyab’s Misa 2000, winner of the 2001 Onassis International Cultural Competition for original music composition for dance in Athens, Greece. The judges must have been overwhelmed with astonishment over the unique nature of the composition with its fusion of East and West, and its projection of a basically Roman Catholic ritual but with the coloration of Islam.
Maestro Palaruan observes that "the orchestration employs or portrays traditional instruments or indigenous motifs such as the bamboo pipes, gongs, typical rhythmic modes of Mindanao kulintang music, a male soprano mimicking a nose flute, a tenor exalting with his kundiman serenade, and an alto leading a congregation in prayer with her powerful voice like an Imam in worship."
There is much that is innovative and adventurous in Misa 2000, and the SMMC and the SMPO led with authority by maestro Palaruan served it all with technical brilliance. Did this mass lift one’s spirit to Heaven’s gate?
The third part of the concert disclosed another facet of Cayabyab’s musical personality – his more popular face. The songs were all delightful and the ensembles were obliged to please the clamor of the audience for more encores. When they performed Walang Hanggan, Cayabyab himself, the master composer, accompanied them on the keyboard to round up Kayumanggi. And this is the initial salvo of San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts’ 2004 special concert series.
Over at the Francisco Santiago Hall, to celebrate the International Day of the Francophonie, the Canadian Embassy presented A Musical Tribute to the Poetry of Paul Verlaine, featuring Canadian soprano Joanna Go with pianist Jonathan Coo.
This unique presentation was a celebration, a tribute, a recollection, a lecture-demonstration and a scholarly exercise all at the same time. The melodies by Debussy, Faure, Hahn, and other composers were all settings of poems by the French Symbolist Verlaine. Joanna annotated every song, which was read afterward in the original French by two charming youngsters and then rendered by the soprano most soulfully that could not fail to ravish the ears and touch the heart.
Coo delivered an account of pieces by Debussy including Claire de Lune that was absolutely exquisite in its sensitivity to nuances phrasing and dynamics, conjuring an atmospheric vision of moonlight shimmering on water as on the canvasses of the Impressionists.
The concert concluded with Joanna regaling her audience with arias from Bizet’s Carmen, Gounod’s Faust and Berlioz’ Beatrice et Benedict.
The PPO’s March concert at the CCP Main Theater had conductor laureate Oscar Yatco wielding the baton as he spurred the orchestra in Beethoven’s tired old warhorse, Symphony No. 5 in C minor. The maestro did show that the work still worth a gallop or two, but it should be led to pasture for many seasons to come before being revived to race again.
On the other hand, Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor received a fresh, vibrant account with Albert Tiu on the keyboard. The bittersweet autumnal tone of the concerto he served without lapsing into sentimentality but never lacking in sentiment. His accord with maestro Yatco and the orchestra was nothing less than absolute.
In a pre-Lenten concert at the San Agustin Church, the PPO and maestro Ruggero Barbieri performed National Artist for Music Lucrecia Kasilag’s Philippine Scenes and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4. This presentation sponsored by the San Agustin Museum served as a prelude to the last PPO concert at the CCP appropriately billed "Coda."
The 2003-2004 season culminated with a definitive account of Gustav Mahler’s gargantuan opus, Symphony No. 8, "The Symphony of a Thousand." Of this piece, which was vastly different from the composer’s earlier works in the genre, he enthused: "All my earlier symphonies are but preludes to this one. My other works are all tragic and subjective. This one is a great dispenser of joy." On another occasion he declared: "Imagine that the whole universe bursts into song. We hear no longer human voices, but those of planets and suns circling in their orbits."
The literary material of the work Mahler drew from two sources, the medieval Latin hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus in Part I and the closing scene of Goethe’s Faust, Book Two in Part II. These sections are linked thematically and musically in a most ingenuous manner.
The symphony exacted incredible demands – an enlarged orchestra including offstage brasses, the vocal forces of Chorus Philippines, Kilyaman Boys Choir, UP Concert Chorus and the UE Chorale and the voices of sopranos Katrina Balajadia, Aileen Espinosa-Cura, Ma. Katrina Saporsantos, altos Janet Sabas-Aracama, Agnes Barredo, tenor Nolyn Cabahug, baritone Lionel Guico and bass Lawrence Jatayna.
Fusing all these musical forces with Goethe’s poetic vision of Faust’s redemption –
Virgin Holy, Mother Queen,
Goddess, gracious be…
The Indescribable
Here it is done;
The Woman-soul leads us
Upward and on.
– Mahler elevates all in the last pages of the symphony to a tremendous crescendo and a thunderous coda that shakes the ramparts of Heaven.
A total triumph for Maestro Barbieri and the PPO and the choruses and the soloists that the theater resounded with a rapturous standing ovation.
During such moments, one doubts the words of Goethe in Faust that perfection is unattainable.