PRSO, Colombian cellist to explore Dutilleux’s dreamworld
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
By PEGGY ANN BLISS
Special to The STAR
The ninth concert (out of 14) of the current Puerto Rico Symphony (PRSO) season will be presented Saturday, and will feature young Colombian cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia playing “Tout un Monde Lointain” (A Whole Distant World) one of the “finest cello solos in the world repertoire,” PRSO Music Director Maximiano Valdés said.
While conductors and cello prodigies recognize the great trio of concertos by German Romantic composer Robert Schumann, British composer Sir Edward Elgar, and Antonin Dvorak from Czechoslovakia, they have adjusted their sights a bit to make room for the lesser known and more recent cello piece by Frenchman Henri Dutilleux, penned between 1967 and 1970, commissioned by and dedicated to the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.
The five-movement piece, played without breaks, creates a flowing, dreamlike effect. The work is based on the famous French poems of Charles Baudelairre, “Les Petits Fleurs du Mal” (The Little Flowers of Evil).
“We will project the words of the poet [in Spanish] at the beginning of each movement,” Valdés said.
Unlike the Romantic cello compositions, in which the solo instrument battles the orchestra, the contemporary piece blends with the strings, celeste and harp for a more dreamlike atmosphere.
The young soloist, who made his debut with a symphony at age 6, comes from a long line of musicians and painters, lives in Vienna and leads a varied life that includes composition and recording, and enjoying all kinds of music.
He has also commissioned several pieces for cello and is planning his first public art exhibit.
Having started to play the cello at age 4, Cañón-Valencia has taken the top prizes in several international competitions and has studied in Germany, the United States, New Zealand and Colombia, and even in his twenties had become known as an advocate of Latin American music, especially Colombian, often influenced by his native folk music, jazz and heavy metal music, which are part of his very eclectic exposure to music even before he could talk.
Opening the program will be a piece by Puerto Rican composer Luis Quintana (b. 1988) titled “On the Ethereal Nature of Bioluminescence,” a piece which evokes the rippling mystery and majesty of the island’s three permanent bioluminescent bays, out of a total of five such phenomena worldwide.
The symphony to be offered by the orchestra is not only of an earlier period but considerably more mainstream. Tchaikovsky’s “Sixth Symphony in B Minor,” better known as “Le Pathetique” doesn’t really mean what it sounds like, but rather more like impassioned, or deep, suffering.
The nickname, suggested by the composer’s brother, in Russian, Patheticheskaya, was later translated to French, which sounds more weighty and noble than its English connotation.
Adding to the appeal of the work is the fact that the composer, an acknowledged homosexual, had presaged his death or even planned it. He teased that the theme of the symphony would forever remain his secret.
Tchaikovsky, who conducted the premiere in St. Petersburg, died at 53, leaving many unanswered questions about his last symphony, which has nonetheless continued to be popular more than 132 years later.
Unlike most symphonies, which end on a triumphal note, “La Pathetique” concludes with an “adagio lamentoso” (slow lament), fueling the belief that Tchaikovsky may have had a premonition, even a death wish, as he wrote this famous work.
The concert will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Pablo Casals Symphony Hall at Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center in Santurce.
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