Multicoloured Counterpoint

By David Moratón

Program no. 10 of the 2006-2007 Season of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra, performed on March 23rd, has been without doubt one of the most interesting and intelligent that has been planned so far. From Bach, with Richard Strauss to Lutoslawski, we were able to attend the audition of musical conceptions as different, and at the same time connected.

The “Ricercata” Offering of Bach’s Musical Offering resonated in the Auditorium, with the mere presence of a beautiful curvilinear organ, along with the architecture of the building. The organist David Malet gave importance to the emotionality of the piece, although he could not dissimulate the rhythmic inconsistencies in such suspicious moments, caused by the complexity of the work as a whole, considered, together with the “Art of Fugue BWV 1080”, as one of the high points of the universal counterpoint.

Bach, synthetic, magisterial, constitutes Western music prior to 6th, and constitutes one of the most important inspirational sources for the composers who succeeded him, who have acquired the historical and renewed relevance at the beginning of the 20th century. For his influence, the OST interpreted the version of the “Fuga Ricercata” for organ by Bach, previously heard, performed by the same David Malet. We were able to enjoy a good execution, with the correct director Edmon Colomer, who achieved – not entirely – convincing in the protagonist of the soloist. From his capacity as anesthetist I can affirm that

has been inspired by the compositional and contrapuntal intelligence of Bach. As the program’s own explanation states, Meneses, the invited violoncellist, just before offering us admirably the concerto and before offering a Bach-style program, “La obra de Lutoslawski is not a beautiful work, but it is a great work” and “eloquent.” For whoever has overcome the barrier of the “beautiful” and has ventured into the land of art, and has approached the infinite possibilities that music has offered us beyond the comprehension of the tonal barrier, for whoever has comprehended that the beautiful term, has definitively melted into an undifferentiated unit, they can even evoke the same sensation of “beautiful skin” about any other romantic work.

The dialogue between soloists and the orchestra was marvelous and very well executed by all the artists who composed the orchestra. The dynamics, the order and the chaos, the construction of the resonance, the exquisite combinations orchestrated by this master of Lutoslawski and, at the same time, worldwide known, all of this was incited by the skill of the soloist, not very accustomed to contemporary music.

Even so, to silence the protests and attract the auditors, the charming and attractive musical pieces of the world tend to be without doubt more appealing, like the “Así habló Zaratustra”, that version of the musical text by Richard Strauss on the work of Nietzsche, closed the program of the evening. The splendid interpretation that the Netherlands Orchestra offered us on the past February 1st, within the framework of the 23rd Festival of Music of Canary Islands, was one that had necessitated more power and consistency in the final school. Despite this, and the platitude that could have been highlighted excessively, testing the coherence of the grand “Viennese waltz” and the “lamento del núcleo”, Strauss makes reference here to the penultimate, to the discovery of Nietzsche, that does not discover a song composed by twelve bells and rings diaformically. The bells here were played by the orchestra with too much residue, nothing more and nothing less than the concept of an unfrozen message contained in them resists, much more than the consciousness of an artist who not only pulverized the established to pieces and that surpassed completely to the history.

Commentary on the concert offered by the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra under the direction of E. Colomer.

The Tenerife musical formation, which acted under the direction of Edmond Colomer, interpreted works by Bach, Lutoslawski and Strauss. Below, Antonio Meneses, invited violinist.

El Dia, Tenerife, Spain
26 March
2007