A stunning debut for teen violinist

The program was enough to attract violin fanciers to the debut concert of 16-year-old violinist Jimmy Tagala Jr. The Beethoven and Khachaturian violin concertos couldn’t be more than challenging. Where the Beethoven is lyrical and autumnal in attitude, the Khachaturian is virtuosic in nature, full of motoric melodies spawned by Soviet formalism. To be able to survive an evening playing these two pieces is proof of any violinist’s stamina and prowess.

Tagala came late to the violin, only learning to play it at 10. After a year of lessons, he won second place in Violin Category A of the NAMCYA in 2002. In 2005, he won first place in Violin Category B of the competitions. By then he had been studying with Maestro Gilopez Kabayao.

The concert, “Building the Youth through Music,” staged by the Adventist University of the Philippines at the Philamlife Theater in Manila, marked the young Tagala’s concert debut. Assisted by his mentor Maestro Gilopez Kabayao and the UST Symphony Orchestra in the Beethoven, and accompanied by pianist Corazon Kabayao in the Khachaturian, he couldn’t have been luckier in his partners.

Maestro Kabayao, a virtuoso in his time and violin pedagogue for close to 40 years now, knew how to support his student in the Beethoven concerto’s difficult passages. Where the concerto would drown the young violinist’s music making, he held the orchestra’s sound in check letting the solo violin be heard. In passages that might have been too brisk or too slow for the soloist, he paced the music as needed, providing music that flows smoothly and safely like a river on its course out to sea.

Despite Maestro Kabayao’s attempts at balancing the orchestra’s sound with that of Tagala’s, the UST Symphony Orchestra needed more time to work on Beethoven’s music. Some entries were late, ensemble playing was sometimes wayward, and there were a couple of lapses in instrumental intonation. The performance sounded as if it was the orchestra’s first attempt at playing the concerto.

Although Maestro Kabayao and the UST Symphony Orchestra were scheduled to accompany Tagala in the Khachaturian, for some unexplained reason, they were not able to. Judging from its work in the Beethoven, it was a fortuitous turn for it gave the audience a chance to hear Maestro Kabayao’s better half, pianist Corazon Kabayao.

While the Khachaturian is better heard in its orchestral version to hear the colorful contrast with the solo violin, the piano reduction brings out the score’s Russian flavor. The seductive turn of the orchestral music in the second movement is brought to greater relief in the piano version. In fact, the piano plays just as much music as the violin, its equal in music making. In the hands of Mme. Kabayao, the orchestral music, albeit in piano reduction, was just as engrossing as the solo work.

Tagala was not fazed by the challenges of the Khachaturian concerto. From the almost motoric opening theme of the first movement, the lyrical flourishes in the second theme, and the dazzling cadenza in the first movement, the young violinist didn’t show any signs of losing track of this challenging composition. The piano reduction of the orchestral music cruelly exposed his solo playing, but it only proved his mastery of Khachaturian’s masterful concerto.

Alas, the same could not be said of the Beethoven, but then this work is considered the Everest of violin concertos. Tagala seemed ill at ease with the music. Where melodies should have soared in song, he had difficulty making the music flow easily. In the cadenza in the first movement, the young violinist sawed at his violin willing the music out of it with little success. It was only at the end with the return of the original melody, when he finally gave up working the music, that the music flowed out without difficulty. From that point to the end of the movement, just a short two- or three-minute span, his playing was transfigured by Beethoven’s intent. But it was such a short moment of illumination. Until the end of the concerto, he continued to struggle with it, failing to find Beethoven’s intent.

Tagala showed great intelligence and ability in the Khachaturian where the focus was on virtuosity. His success here augurs well for his future at working with technically challenging pieces. We hope to hear him tackle other Russian violin concertos, such as the Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky, all technically difficult ones.

However, he still has to work on the Beethoven, and discover what the music means to him, before he works it into the full form. The Beethoven violin concerto requires musical maturity to make sense of its meaning, which maybe is too much to ask of a 16-year-old.