Pianist Ramos Santana, PRSO to pay homage to Spain
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
By PEGGY ANN BLISS
Special to The STAR
When piano fans in Puerto Rico find themselves in company with Hispanophiles, one thing can put them on Cloud 9 faster than anything: the island’s most esteemed classical pianist interpreting a masterful fusion of both elements by Spain’s most revered composer Manuel de Falla with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (PRSO).
This Saturday’s eighth concert in the PRSO’s current cultural season will also feature an orchestra tribute to Spain by a French composer considered by de Falla to have captured the spirit of Spain better than many native composers.
José Ramos Santana will interpret the most beloved keyboard piece from the Iberian peninsula: “Nights in the Gardens of Spain” (Noches en los jardines de España) under the baton of Chilean musical director Maximiano Valdés.
The Manhattan-based Ramos Santana, who has not performed with the PRSO since the recent COVID-19 pandemic, has made this lush tone poem his own many times throughout the world.
But nothing made him prouder than to be invited to substitute for the towering Barcelona-born interpreter of this beloved masterpiece, Alicia de Larrocha (1924-2009), when she was forced to cancel in New Mexico. That substitution with the Albuquerque Symphony some three decades ago was particularly serendipitous, because from his early years Ramos Santana had admired de Larrocha and the Hispanic repertoire she so ardently defended during her almost 80 years on the stage.
Also on the program is French impressionist composer Claude Debussy’s “Iberia: Orchestral Images Suite No. 2,” representative of the European infatuation of all things Spanish in the 19th century as seen by Spain’s nearest neighbor.
“I have played this piece many times throughout the world,” said the Puerto Rico native in a text talk with the STAR this week. Nevertheless, he has been practicing the three-movement piece that he first approached decades ago as if it were a world premiere. “Noches,” as Ramos Santana affectionately refers to his signature piece, “is based on the Asturian culture,” exemplified, he notes, by the “cante jondo” (deep song) of the third and final movement “In the Gardens of the Cordoba Rocky Mountain Range.” This most serious form reflects the centuries of marginalization and hardship suffered by the Roma (Gypsy) people of southern Spain. It represents the purest and most intense of the Romani dances, with roots from the Arabic, Hebrew and Byzantine cultures.
So admired by serious artists were these unique songs and dances that in 1922 de Falla joined forces with the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca to create a flamenco competition in Granada to preserve the genre.
Faithful to his own roots, Ramos Santana is the founder of the Puerto Rico International Piano Festival held annually at the Puerto Rico Conservatory and has collaborated with sculptor and entrepreneur-cum-hostess Jan D’Esopo on initiatives by the Steinway Society of Puerto Rico to support local pianists. D’Esopo, the owner and artistic soul of The Gallery Inn in Old San Juan, has been a longtime fan and collaborator with the pianist, who has given several intimate concerts in the boutique bed and breakfast, which boasts six Steinways and provides a headquarters for one of the very few Steinway regional societies in the world.
Ramos Santana, known to his fans as “Kiko,” has performed with many of the great orchestras all over the world, but still finds time to teach in the Steinhardt School of Music at New York University and the Levine School of Music in Washington, D.C.
Opening the program will be “Elegia andina” (Andean Elegy) by contemporary U.S. pianist and composer Gabriela Lena Frank. In a search for her mother’s Peruvian roots over quarter of a century ago, she found material that influenced her use of traditional folk instruments and her own special techniques with conventional flutes and percussion.
Frank’s first work for orchestra premiered in 2000. Her pilgrimage to the Andean nation was a quest to discover, in her own words, “how much Latina and how much gringa” she had in her.
The concert will close with Felix Mendelssohn’s “Third Symphony,” known for its unique progression from minor to major keys. Although the 40-minute piece, played attacca, or without interruption between movements, opens in A minor, it progresses through four movements to the major key.
And in another rare irony, the Hispanic flavor of the program and a significant anniversary have been overlooked. The STAR has learned that Maurice Ravel’s originally programmed warhorse “Bolero” has been scrapped due to extra instrumentation, although this has not been confirmed. While the excessive royalty costs for the United States expired only three weeks ago, the 17-minute piece requires excessive extra expenditure for rare instruments like the oboe d’amore and extra musicians for what has been identified as perhaps the most performed of short pieces in the world orchestra repertoire.
Ironically, this is a year celebrating the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, perhaps the reason for including the piece, which has not had excessive exposure in Puerto Rico.
Either way, Mendelssohn, born more than two centuries ago, made sure the evening would end on a major note.
The concert will be held Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Pablo Casals Symphony Hall at Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center in Santurce.