A blessed invitation to ring in Holy Week.
- The San Juan Daily Star
- Mar 20
- 2 min read
By PEGGY ANN BLISS
Special to The STAR
When young Puerto Rican pianist Bryan Ojeda Chevres got a call in New York from Maximiano Valdés inviting him to bring Ludwig Beethoven’s 4th piano concerto to the stage next Saturday March 28 with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (PRSO), he was ecstatic.
Not so much when the young man, who lives in New York City, was told there was no money to pay him.
But not knowing where the dollars (one or two thousand) would come from didn’t stop him.
The concert, Ojeda’s sixth with the orchestra, and his fifth under the baton of Valdés, would go on, replacing the much-awaited Brahms “Requiem,” silenced by lack of funds, along with an entirely new program, still in the spirit of the Christian world’s Holy Week, which begins the next day with Palm Sunday.
The piano concerto, the last one the composer ever played in public with an orchestra, due to encroaching deafness, is “revolutionary,” Ojeda noted, for breaking a tradition in piano concertos.
“It is a very reflective piece, with a chord that sounds like it came straight from the heavens,” he said in a text interview from his home.
“It is at times very turbulent and passionate and at times very contemplative,” he noted. “That makes it perfect as we go into Holy Week.”
Perhaps out of love for Beethoven, loyalty to Valdés, the orchestra and his fans, Ojeda willingly accepted the invitation, perhaps believing the gods which protect musicians would intervene.
They did, with $1,000 from The Puerto Rico Steinway Society. On the heels of that donation came the idea for a fundraising concert at the spectacular venue of its founder D’Esopo, The Gallery Inn in Old San Juan.
A few of his friends came up with ideas to participate in the intimate recital on one of The Gallery’s six magnificent Steinways.
Also on the program will be “The Good Friday Spell” from Richard Wagner’s last opera, “Parsifal,” and Antonin Dvorak’s “Seventh Symphony.”
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