Costa Blanca Arts Update - Through the emotions – Soler, Valero and Gandía at ADDA in Alicante

Gala Lirica, Opera Gala or merely Song Medley often labels an admixture of showcase snippets, offered, it seems, primarily to advertise a voice or commemorate a venue. Too often these evenings degenerate into a succession of star turns, offering world-stopping climaxes every three minutes or so, with each old chestnut being greeted with the audience’s enthusiasm merely because it is recognized. One is reminded of the occasions where the star is applauded over the top of the music, making it inaudible, merely because the song has been included.

At its best, this format can offer a memorable evening of fine singing that, via its very brevity, reminds an audience of a multitude of bigger experiences. At its very best, a judgment that would apply to the evening offered by Lorena Valero and Antonia Gandía in Alicante, fine voices deliver superb music and just enough acting and characterization to offer meaning without excess sentimentality. It is often an excess of false emotion that often renders these occasions less than memorable, but the right amount, as here in Alicante, adds to the experience.

These two voices, the mezzo of Lorena Valero and the superb, dramatic tenor of Antonio Gandía gave a mixed program of well-known set pieces from grand opera and, perhaps for many in this audience, a set of pieces from the less well-known world of Spanish Zarzuela. It was a world that was well known, obviously, to the two singers and especially to the conductor, Cristobal Soler, who regularly presents this genre in Madrid’s Zarzuela Theatre.

The format was clear, orchestra, solo, solo, duo and repeat. Juxtaposed with Verdi, von Flotow and Gounod, one is reminded just how unique is the sound world of Puccini. Delilah’s aria from Saint-Saens’s Samson and Delilah and Lippen Schweigen from Lehar’s Merry Widow brought the opera half to close.

After the interval, the Zarzuela began with Chueca, Marqués and Sorozábal, whose sound world is itself very sophisticated. Moreno Torroba featured large, as did Jiménez’s famous Luis Alonso Intermezzo. Fernández Caballero’s El Dúo de la Africana brought the evening to a close, but there was always going to be an encore, which was Me Llamas Rafelillo from Penella’s El Gato Montés, sung in Valenciano to the audience’s delight.

Throughout, the ADDA Simfonica played their part to perfection, as ever, with the brass especially resplendent. Loreno Valero’s voice, always accurate and never forced, coped well with some testing moments. Antonia Gandía’s tenor is a great voice throughout its vocal and dynamic range. And both singers communicated superbly with their fellow musicians, one another, and with their audience. It was an evening that went through the emotions, from love to regret, from anger to sympathy, from playfulness to aggression and ultimately to joy. These occasions often go only through the motions, but this Soler, Valero, Gandía and ADDA combination made this a night to remember.

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Alfaz del Pi February concerts - Pilar and Pedro Valero, Duo Evocacion and Maria Kosenkova

Music can take an audience to many different places. It all depends on where they want to go. But during a period of coronavirus restrictions, merely out of the house might just be enough. The Comunidad Valenciana rules for public gatherings are clear, and it is within these rules that Alfaz del Pi Classical Music Society operates, complete with socially spaced seating, temperature checks and contact lists. But once out of the house and in that space, music can still transport us and there was no better example of how this happens than during the Society’s two February concerts.

On Saturday 20 February in Casa Cultura, we heard the piano playing of Pilar and Pedro Valero in a program that featured composers from no less than eight countries, probably mirroring the cosmopolitan nature of the small but highly appreciative audience. What the pianists presented was effectively two solo programs with a little four hands at the end.

Pilar Valero first performed Ravel, a Prelude followed by Ondine and then she played the Rachmaninoff Prelude Opus32 no12 and Study Op39 no5 before finishing with Rondeña by Albeniz. Pilar Valero’s playing really did illustrate the stylistic differences between these composers, whose active life spanned shared decades. In many ways, the music of Albeniz is the most unconventional of the three and marries the post-impressionism of Ravel with the nationalism and sentimentality of Rachmaninoff.

Pedro Valero offered three pieces, Schubert’s Sonata in A major D664, Fazil Say’s Variations on Summertime and then Resurrección del Angel by Astor Piazzolla. The amazing understatement of the Schubert was often contradicted by how darkly many of the phrases finished. The contrast with the jazz-inspired glitter of the Fazil Say variations was stunning and then Piazzolla’s slow, halting dance supplied a troubled tranquility.

And then to conclude we had four-hand versions of the Dance from La Vida Breve of Manuel de Falla and finally Brahms’s rousing Hungarian Dance no5.

And then on Sunday 21 February in Albir, we had Dúo Evocación with Maria Kosenkova in a program of songs and arias. Dúo Evocatión comprises soprano, Olha Viytiv and the piano of Hilario Segovia Badia. They opened with the Mozart concert aria, Io No Chiedo, before mezzo-soprano Maria Kosenkova took the stage to start with two of four Strauss songs. Like all such concerts, the list of pieces is long, so I will not list them all by title. After the Mozart, we heard four songs by Richard Strauss, two pieces each by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and then Delibes, Massenet, and Thomas. We then heard an aria from Barbieri’s El Barbarillo, two of Manuel de Falla’s popular songs, Nana and Polo, and then Ma Llaman La Primarosa of Gimenez and Nieto. An encore of the Barcarole from the Tales of Hoffmann brought the concert to a rapturous close. The sheer volume created by the two sopranos was, at times, simply stunning, especially in the vocal acrobatics supplied by the aria from Delibes’s Lakme.

But what shone through both events was the musicians’ determination to interpret and communicate, an approach that reached out to the audience and was gratefully received and acknowledged. In these difficult times, these two concerts were bright examples of how performed music can uplift and regenerate.