Mist and Fire

Last January 31, the second work premiered at the 23rd Festival of Music of the Canary Islands, called “Nebula”, by the Canarian composer Manuel Ruiz. Although the existing ones seemed little sincere. And it is that, contrary to what happened with the premiere of contemporary music, each time it has been accepted, it has not been produced much more in the public and the music further than the doctrinaire one. Thirty years in the repertory domain in the festivals, we have been displaced to the XIX century, composed by Bério, by certain, but it seems that Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Takemitsu, Berio, Rautavaara and so many other jewels of the composition have been being excluded by the predecessor.

To finalize this work, a ballad of indetermination, Juan Manuel Ruiz got up from the stalls, and making this gesture he received some applause to be considered a risky claim for the box office.

The work, which was interpreted by a sober Symphony Orchestra of the Low Countries and directed by the German conductor Gerd Albrecht. Of advanced age, Albrecht appeared precisely in synchrony with the precision of his direction as well as on the few occasions when he was overwhelmed and his lack of emotional impulse control in the interpretation of the sound. For example, the set of Irish landscapes came to his head in the stalls through the powerful sound.

THE NETHERLANDS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA DID NOT STAND OUT ESPECIALLY IN A MUSICAL EVENING WITH WORK BY STRANGER

And the vitality of the overture “Hussite” by Dvorak, a patellistic human author. He achieved and we get close to a Serenata in D major for winds by Strauss (a voice of Stine Hjerrild), trump (by rarely named Benjamin Britten). Without a doubt, “The Bird of Fire”, by Igor Stravinsky, although interpreted with some harmonic efficiencies, interpretations, consistent, was the most interested. To a large extent, the merit is of the work itself and the Stravinskian, magical, dazzling style, of accelerated and extraordinary modern vitality. Based on a legend of love and hatred (as in the exclusive work of Rimsky-Korsakov), and molded by the harmonious mastery and the brilliant impending genius of a 27-year-old Stravinsky, “The Bird of Fire” was born with the light of the memory of a musical evening that could well have been submerged in the “nebula” of oblivion.

David Moratón
El Dia, Tenerife, Spain
2 Febrero
2007