Cecile: Candid offstage

The first thing Cecile Licad said on arriving at the CCP luncheon-conference was, “I’m hungry. My stomach is growling.” She said this naturally, without any self-consciousness.

During lunch, she revealed she loves to go to a fish market and look at fish eyes (!) or visit shops to see their display. She expertly cooks paella, buko, sinigang, adobo and other Filipino dishes, finding great pleasure in cooking for friends. “It is so relaxing,” she confessed.

She lives in a building in New York where artists and musicians reside, among them Peter Serkin, pianist-son of Cecile’s first mentor Rudolf Serkin, a Metropolitan Opera diva and other kindred souls. The man living downstairs doesn’t enjoy classic music and when his radio is blaring, Cecile’s tremendous chards drown out the “noise.” Incidentally, Cecile is allowed to practice only from nine to six in her apartment.

Her son Ottavio, who performed with her at the CCP last year, is now 20 and is enrolled at Brooklyn College where he studies philosophy, literature — “all that serious stuff.” Whenever he disagrees with his professors, he argues with them and gets a grade of 1 for his candor and audacity. Cecile regards her son as her “adviser”; when she gets nervous before a performance of his — he is virtually self-taught — he tells her: “Relax. Keep cool.” Cecile thinks Ottavio extremely talented but wanting in drive. I told her the drive will come in due time; she agreed.

What audiences does Cecile find most responsive? The German. Also the Filipino. Conductor Laureate Oscar C. Yatco, who will assist Cecile in her March 28 concert, quoted German cellist Alban Gerhardt (with whom Cecile recently performed in Germany) thus: “I thought only we Germans understand Beethoven and know how to interpret him. Cecile, too, fully understands Beethoven.”

Yatco pointed out that Cecile studies every score closely, in her wish to interpret the composer, and not herself. But because she is so spontaneous, with spontaneity characterizing her renditions, no two interpretations of the same piece are ever the same. Cecile agreed, adding that a pianist, or any other musician, must keep evolving. To “evolve” is imperative to both Maestro Yatco and Cecile.

How do they establish rapport? Yatco replied: “Through respect. We respect each other’s musical ideas. Cecile is a soloist; I direct some seventy men.” When a pianist is inspired, he/she also inspires the orchestra members, Cecile observed.

Does Cecile like dissonant music? Here Yatco intervened. “The ‘dissonances’ of Chopin et al led to the music of Wagner.” In this regard, when the film director currently making a movie of modern composers heard Cecile play a piece by Gottschalk — the modern American composer of German descent — he remarked that her interpretation would well fit the film he is directing. This brings to my mind Serkin’s evaluation of Cecile when she was starting to study under him: “Cecile seems to be at home in any style.”

Once, Cecile tried singing “Moon River” in a Karaoke Bar, laughing off her “debut.”

Did Cecile wish to be a pianist as a child? Not really. However, her parents “pushed” her toward the piano, fed her incessantly with music and being intensely musical, she eventually latched on to the idea of becoming a pianist.

Irene M. Araneta proudly claimed that noon: “Cecile can play ten hours from her repertory at any given time.” Indeed, Cecile has clocked hundreds of hours while drawing from her vast repertory in engagements with major orchestras and conductors in three continents. Yet, the open-minded Cecile stoutly maintained, “A critic has a right to his opinion, favorable or not.”

She will render Beethoven’s Concerto in B Flat Major and Rachmaninoff’s in C Minor this Friday in tribute to her eminent forbear, composer Francisco Buencamino. The PPO will play Beethoven’s Egmont Overture under Yatco.