A concert that surely made history - Pablo Sainz Villegas in Arturo Marquez's Concierto Mistico y Profano with Josep Vicent and the ADDA orchestra

 

It is possible to run out of superlatives. We can easily pepper any description with the words “best” or “greatest”, but they have been so overused that to see them is often associated with a dismissal of the message as marketing hype. I will not, therefore, describe last night’s ADDA concert is the “best” or the “greatest”. I will simply say that it was utterly memorable, intensely moving and completely joyous, and perhaps may go down in history.

On paper, it looked like a short concert, promising under an hour of music, comprising just two works. In the event, it lasted two hours and presented seven pieces. Such is our varied and rich experience of ADDA concerts under Josep Vicent’s artistic directorship.

The ADDA orchestra opened the concert with a non-programmed piece. Josep Vicent explained that they would offer something to mark the passing of Pope Francis and, in recognition of his work for peace, they would play the Nimrod variation from an Elgar’s Enigma. The music’s tranquillity and understatement made a perfect tribute.

I have been attending concerts for about sixty years and the experience that followed our unscheduled opening must rank as a pinnacle of those decades. In every respect, the playing, the composition, the approach and the delivery, it was all utterly memorable. And perhaps even historically so.

What made it special was the second ever performance of the Concierto Mistico y Profano of Arturo Marquez. By the end of the work, it was clear to everyone that this was a major contribution to the repertoire, a concerto to go alongside those of Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos as potentially one of the most performed guitar concertos.

Pablo Sainz Villegas gave a superb performance of this rhythmically complex work, indeed stressing those rhythms, but also taking every opportunity to ensure that the lyricism showed through. His playing was both inspired and inspiring. It is a work of some complexity, but the audience immediately warmed to its simultaneous accessibility.

As ever, the ADDA orchestra also starred, and the dynamics were so carefully worked out by composer and performers alike that not a note of the solo guitar part was lost. This was surely a performance that made musical history in that, if the concerto does indeed become standard repertoire, then this performance will be seeing as pivotal in establishing the work’s credentials.

No, less than three encores followed. An orchestral version of the well-known Romanza, provided a calm interlude after the rhythmic vitality of the concerto, but then a version of Piazzolla’s Libertango re-established it. Josep Vicent also joined in with a percussion accompaniment when he used his baton on his desk to colour things even more.

Then Pablo Sainz Villegas played a solo piece. It was nothing less than the Gran Jota of Tarrega, complete with snare drum rolls sounded by tangling the guitar’s E and A strings. Quite superb. Even breathtaking.

In the second half, we heard an orchestral tour de force. Mussorgsky’s music with orchestration by Ravel became an ultra-colourful Pictures At An Exhibition. This is work that is well known and is always spectacular.

And orchestral encore brought the concert to a close and appropriately, it was the Danzon 2 of Marquez. The ADDA orchestra plays this piece quite regularly, but in their hands, it never loses either its shine or its excitement. The players’ enthusiasm when the band strikes up is palpable. There were a lot of smiles around during this concert, and not only among the audience, but between the players as well. It was clearly a night to remember for all concerned.

Memorias de mis putas tristes by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez may have invented magical realism, a writing style that stresses realism in language to the extent that images become amplified, perhaps stretched, or recoloured. The resulting hyper-reality can be seen by some readers as dream-like or exaggerated, when it merely reflects an enhanced sensitivity of awareness. The effect on the reader can be astounding, arresting, like free association with imagination nailed to the spot of the present. If such a reader is convinced, the feeling is that of being incorporated into the events, drawn in, albeit passively, into an experience that is involving and constantly surprising. There can, however, be challenges with experience that “takes you there”, rather than relates or describes in a more detached way.

In his novel, Memorias de mis putas tristes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez seems, at first glance, to have applied this stylistic technique to the book’s scenario, itself. A reader is immediately plunged into a place they might have thought they would never go and, if one is to experience this story, one has to remain in that role for the duration, which, in the case of this book, is not very long.

We meet a journalist. We experience life from his perspective, very much from within his experience. His perspective throughout is that we are sharing this life, living it alongside his old age and we suddenly seem to know him well. He is just turning ninety years old: this we know. His mind, clearly, remains acute: this, also, we know from the start. We also realise that he must still be in possession of other faculties that might have burned out in a man of his age, because he announces early on that he is about to celebrate his achievement of another decade by paying to deflower a fourteen-year-old girl. Arrangements are ongoing. The girl needs the money, at least her family does. It seems she, herself, does not expect to profit, though clearly others will. It’s a business arrangement, no more, no less. And hence, we the readers, are “being taken there”.

But, for the first time in his long life, the old man finds himself in love. At ninety, and in circumstances where the transaction was to be no more than contractual, he finds himself involved, emotionally as well as physically. He begins to imagine a permanence in this relationship, a permanence that would begin at the age of ninety.

We learn a little of the journalist’s past and his professional status. We learn more of the present social conditions of the town where he lives. But this is not a long, analytical novel. On the contrary, it is short, more of a short story, and so we find that we do not have to inhabit this persona for many pages. But the experience is revealing and not a little moving.

As to meaning? Interpretation? The reality that presents itself demands our free association remains rooted to the protagonist’s spot. We have no choice. This is not me, the reader, but magically a reader of this novel shares a vivid reality that probably would never have been imagined.