No Filipino cited in book on world pianists/ The Mangyan exhibit

US pianist, teacher, writer David Dubal has come out with his revised and expanded book "The Art of the Piano" (third edition, 2004), which includes pianists from all over the world, from earliest times to the present. However, there is not a single Filipino mentioned or cited in it!

This despite Dubal’s pointing out in the introduction that Asian pianists are filling conservatories and winning competitions. In this regards Cecile Licad won the Leventritt Award at 19; Raul Sunico won in the Viotti Competition in Italy; Reynaldo Reyes placed first in the Marguerite Long Competition while he was in the Paris Conservatory; Rowena Arrieta at 18 was the only Filipino laureate in the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

All these pianists certainly deserve inclusion in the book, yet the Baltimore Sun ironically writes: "David Dubal knows more about the piano and its lore than anyone else writing today." Obviously, he knows nothing about Filipino pianists.

To be sure, certain Orientals are in the book, though most with the barest mention: Fou T’song and Lang Lang (Chinese), Yuji Takaheshi, Mitsuko Uchida and Hiroku Nakamura (Japanese), Walid Akid (Lebanese) and Tong-Il Han (Korean) who was first prize winner in the 24th Leventritt Competition, the same tilt in which Licad also won first prize.

In Germany, I heard Martha Agerich perform in 1989 and even then, I would have placed Licad several notches above the Argentinian player – who is in the book!

Incidentally, a number of concertists Dubal includes have performed in Manila at one time or another, and I had the good fortune of listening to them: The English Solomon, Rudolf Serkin, one of Licad’s mentors; Gary Graffman who, like Licad, was a Leventritt winner; Eugene Istomin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andre Watts, Claudio Arrau, Van Cliburn and Philippe Entremont who appeared jointly with Licad at the CCP main theater, and in a solo concert.

Many of the earlier pianists above were presented by the fabulous impresario Alfredo Lozano at St. Cecilia’s Hall, there having been no Cultural Center then; the later ones, by the equally audacious Ralph Zulueta da Costa.

Sunico’s Russian mentor in Juilliard, Sascha Gorodnitzki, is briefly mentioned; so is the Lithuanian Isabelle Vengerova, mentor of Nena R. Villanueva who at ten played two full-length concertos in the ruins of Intramuros shortly after the war.

The great pianists Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein are described extensively by Dubal. I heard Rubinstein in Boston while I was a student in Harvard U, and I have never ceased to regret missing Horowitz, also in Boston.

In this country, as elsewhere, pianists outnumber other concertizing instrumentalists – violinists, cellists, flutists, etc. We have, in fact, a profusion of outstanding pianists whom I shall name in random order besides those I have already mentioned: Fr. Manuel Maramba, Jiovanney Emmanuel Cruz, Cristine Coyuito, Ingrid Santa Maria, Regalado Jose, the US-based Jaime Bolipata, Carminda L. Regala, Corazon Pineda Kabayao, Najib Ismail and Mary Anne Espina – both of whom are better known as assisting artists, unfairly perhaps – Rene Calandan (whatever happened to him?) and younger ones like Grieg Zuniega, Jonathan Coo and Aileen Chanco, and student scholars Oliver Salonga and Hiyas Hila.

Certain pianists prefer ensemble playing: Carmen "Menchu" Padilla, Amelita Guevarra, Della Besa, Anna Maria de Guzman and Mary Ann Armovit.

Last September at F. Santiago Hall, Aima Maria Labra Makk, assisted by the Manila Community Orchestra under Josefino "Chino" Toledo, played with a bristling virtuosity which overwhelmed her listeners. Her tremendously powerful rendition could have compared with that of any of our leading concertists today.

To my mind, certain of the above pianists, especially those mentioned earlier, should have been included in Dubal’s list. Why were they left out? Reynaldo Reyes’ repertoire is remarkably and uniquely extensive. One wonders whether their exclusion had to do with our being a Third World, economically poor country. Japan and China, and even Korea, rate higher in the economic scale. (In the literary field, likewise, the Japanese and the Chinese are more widely known abroad than the Filipino.)

Our ballyhooed musicality as a people has miserably failed to gain notice in the international scene. How discouraging and distressing!

Mangyan exhibit

My friend Lolita Delgado Fansler has sent me a special invitation – followed up by a phone call from her cousin Rachel Delgado Garcia – to the Mangyan exhibition at the Ayala Museum which opened last Thursday.

Titled "Myth and Meaning", it is being presented by the Mangyan Heritage Center in cooperation with the Royal Netherlands Embassy and the Ayala Museum. The exhibit of the culture of the indigenous peoples of Mindoro, should interest artists, sociologists, historians, academicians and yes, the average onlooker.

It is the first public display of artifacts from different Mangyan groups, pre-Hispanic indigenous script, and old-to-recent photographs depicting their way of life. At the exhibit, viewers will read Mangyan ambahans (poems) — see sample below – and learn to write their names in an original Philippine script. They might even try Mangyan cuisine. Enticing books and crafts are on sale.

One poem in original Philippine script reads:

That time when I was still young,
I was just a baby still,
when I sat on mother’s lap,
in her arms she cradled me,
Oh, how sweet these memories!
Wish I could climb once again
in the cradle lovely made!
So I could be showing off
How I grew so beautifully!