It is dark, it is mysterious; it is filled with fury, it is filled with
light. There are moments like
birdsong –a memory from her childhood? I can’t help thinking of Mónica Lavín’s
lyrical descriptions of the grandfather’s library;- there are moments of tenderness. Indicated that way in the score: con ternura, with tenderness. Drama, movement. Restlessness. My mind which so loves a story feels that this is her
restless curiosity, her endlessly seeking mind. I am talking about Sor Juana’s mind. She is the muse of Pilar Jurado’s work Primero Sueño, the first piece on the
second Monarca disc.
All through learning and preparing and memorising Jurado’s piece since
mid-2010 (yikes!), off and on I would be struck by how operatic it is; I would
think about characters both physical and metaphorical, think about how that
meant the music must be. I
annotated my score in terms of the organization of an opera: Overture, Act I,
Act II, etc. Sometime in May of
this year I wrote on a post-it in the score, “Might it be that this entire
piece is the Overture to an opera which has yet to be written?”
I believe it is. I believe that
is why it works so magnificently as the first piece of this second Monarca
disc. It is an Overture. In one way or another it prefigures almost
every other piece on this recording.
It is followed by Wallach’s Lágrimas
y Locuras: Mapping the Mind of a Madwoman. The piece, in effect a Fantasy on the Mexican folktune La Llorona, staggers along, raving and stumbling
on the edge of disaster. I realized
that I must be willing to dance on the precipice when I play it, there’s no
being safe with this piece: the minute I do it’s Sleepy-time.
The composer is emphatic that she does not
seek to tell the story of La llorona,
but rather to explore the emotional landscape of this woman “at war with her own history” who wanders eternally
along the rivers of all Mexico, searching for her lost, drowned children. Not much light here, in spite of the
pianistic brilliance of the piece, and in spite of the beautiful and –here in
Mexico- universally-known melody. The memory of happiness, or of its illusion. Fury, indeed; and the loneliness with which
it goes hand in hand.
That fury finds an echo in certain parts of McNeff’s extraordinary Evening with doña Eduviges (una Fantasia). This is a far more complex woman than
the one of whom McNeff paints a
portrait in the gorgeous Pavane (in the
old way) for doña Susanita which he composed for Rumor de Páramo. She is capable of anger –and indeed,
there are moments of crazy brutality in this piece, fury here too, out of
control. At the same time, like every human I suppose, she longs for the warmth
of the sun, for love and for beauty.
She is quite willing to accept cheap substitutes --that drop-dead
gorgeous melody to which McNeff give the indication “cheaply” … oh Cervantes,
here is where you have to be a real Interpreter-- ; so I decided that the first
time I would play it almost Liberace-style, very manneristic and overdone, like
cheap perfume. But the second time,
when it returns almost at the very end – what then? No, here is where for just a moment we glimpse her true and unarmoured heart;
here it’s no longer meretricious but utterly open. A couple of measures to make you weep for everything that’s
been lost or denied, to all people everywhere.
And then YES, the palate-cleanser: Georgina Derbez’ piece whose muse is,
I confess with due modesty but great honour, Ana Cervantes. Direct and urgent as an arrow, it calls
us up into the heavens. It clears
away the rage, it clears away the memories of brutality and silence, lies and
loss.
Lavista … what do I say? This piece GLISTENS, it turns slowly in
the light and --like all of Lavista’s music-- lures our ears and our
imagination ineluctably into its world.
I feel that Mujer pintando … is far more complex in terms of affekt than Páramos de Rulfo which Lavista wrote for Rumor. Its muse is Joy Laville, the British
painter who has lived for years in Mexico and is the widow of the great Mexican
writer Jorge Ibargüengoitia.
The piece for me has a Byzantine
opulence. I say Byzantine not in
the sense of unnecessary complications but rather to evoke something which
springs from more than one world, as in something from both East and West, for
example. There are moments in
which to my ears it turns openly voluptuous, there are moments in which it has
all the determination and boldness of those intrepid late-19th-century
English adventurer-women who, disguised as men and risking death, penetrated
the sacred and men-only city of Mecca .
I suppose it’s important to know that I
received this piece on 20 June, when I was three days away from the end of that
little tour in my home state of Guanajuato. I had very little
time and energy for entering into the whole new world which is learning a piece
by Mario Lavista. I have said for
some years that the creative process is not like going to the corner store for
a quart of milk. This time my
conviction was tested to the limits.
I left it open. Various people said I had every right to not record it. The composer himself left it open. But JIMINY, this is Mario Lavista, one
of our greatest living composers, who has done me the honour of composing not
one but TWO pieces for my commissioning projects. How could I not find a way to record this piece?!
Hard to believe that we did all of this in
slightly more than one week. But we did.
Several people said to me, But that’s so little time! I suppose so … but it’s important to
remember three things. First, I
arrived ready to record. Hard to
pin this down exactly, but I felt that I arrived ready to record not only
musically and technically but also spiritually and emotionally. Does that sound really pyramids-and-crystals? … but that is how it was.
Second, I and audio engineer Roberto de Elías
plus Second Engineer Kenji Calderón understand each other very well and have
what I can only describe as a superb working relationship. I have total confidence in their ears
and in their technical ability.
Third, having a magnificent concert instrument
on which to record – and a magnificent piano technician on call for tuning
touch-ups and for voicing hammers.
In both January and July I felt incredibly and totally supported as
regards the piano. Thank you MAESTRO Alejandro
CUbillo, thank you Yamaha México!!
I want to
mention again something I said here in January: this work of voicing hammers is something for which
no mechanical substitute will ever be found, EVER. It is a joint effort between technician and pianist: a
miracle of ears, touch, and intense concentration on the part of both.
Monday the 8th, as you know, the
phenomenal Yamaha C7 arrived.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we recorded, one by one, each of the
six other pieces of this second disc, starting with Wallach and finishing with
Ortiz.
That Thursday, together with my fabulous
engineering team I made two decisions:
First, that on Friday and Saturday 2nd
Engineer Kenji and I would do all the editing for the pieces we’d recorded so
far; and second, that I’d come on Monday 15 to the studio and practice
Lavista. If I had energy after all
the editing on Saturday, I’d stay on and practice a bit. If not, I would study the piece away
from the piano on Sunday. I badly
wanted for us all to have Sunday to rest ears, mind, concentration, soul.
And so it was. By Saturday afternoon we’d finished all the edits. And, of course, to nobody’s surprise, I
hadn’t the slightest energy to stay and practice. It would have been a slap in the face to that piece. Kenji gave me a ride, as always, to the
Coyoacán metro station. On Sunday,
as I’d wished, we all rested. I
made a loin of pork cooked in orange juice and white wine with garlic and
finished at the very last minute with chunks of fresh mango. YUMMM, B*** and I enjoyed it with new
potatoes and salad and a lovely Argentinean Sauvignon Blanc. Later, after the coffee, I spent some
time looking at the Lavista score.
Everything in me just wanted to look and think, listen inside me and
think about sound and gesture and rhythm, make a map of architecture and affekts.
Monday I went and practiced, the first time
I’d been alone in the studio. So
lovely, a good four hours there just with that piece. Very restorative, I think as I go out
for comida at the Sushi Itto, to go
back to that disciplined, elemental process of getting inside a piece. I wrote
in my notebook,
What a pleasure to
practice, really practice, as one practices when entering the space of a new
piece! Today it’s as though I’d rested for days on end instead of just
yesterday. I feel that I’m seeing
tons of things and I am falling totally in love with this piece.
So Tuesday we did it. We recorded Mujer pintando en cuarto azul (Woman
Painting in a Blue Room), of Mario Lavista. It is not what it will be in six months and it is not perfect
(as though anyone really cared about that). But I believe I communicate --with
the help of that wonderful Yamaha C7-- the opulence and the gleam or the top,
the velvet of the bass; most of the sonic, gestural, and rhythmic qualities
which I wanted to make real. And I
think I did a reasonable job of the architecture. A lot of different spaces in that piece!
And I recorded Uribe again. It was like dessert after the long rich
meal of recording.
Those of you who read this Blog back in
January when I finished recording the first disc will remember how sure I was
about the order … well, this is why we often need to take time and listen, and
reflect, and feel, and listen again. So it was that sometime in mid-March, after listening to the
pre-master of the first disc a number of times just me and also with people
whose ears I enormously respect, I decided that it should open with Horacio
Uribe’s El viaje nocturno de
Quetzalpapálotl / The Night Voyage of Quetzalpapálotl.
I am listening to the master of this disc as I
write and I am realizing: after that arrow-straight piece of Derbez, there is
no more pain shut away and silenced, there is no more fury. How is it that all that gets left
behind? But it does.
Now all that is left is patience, ecstasy,
energy, and joy.
Anne LeBaron chose Remedios Varo for her muse;
and in particular, Varo's painting Creación
de las Aves (Creation of the Birds).
For me this piece says it all about the essential tension between that
rhapsodic moment of ideation and imagination; and the discipline and patience
required to make the idea real.
In her note on the piece, LeBaron says “The origin of life is … transformed … into a warm-blooded
miracle, a song taking flight.” This piece also has –for me-
moments of absolutely earthy hip-revolving
voluptuousness. And also
humour: I am quite positive that
there are two measures which refer specifically to the Creation of the Pelican!
And we
end with Gabriela Ortiz’ Preludio y Estudio No 3 Jesusa Palancares. The
Prelude is the early-morning mist on the Isthmus of Tehuántepec, shot through
with brief gleams of sunlight; the Study is the indomitable energy of this
woman. It is, at moments, coquettish or playful, it has delicacy and also sensuality,
but more than anything else it is irruptive, volcanic, triumphant.
And
that is how we end, after so much patience: with ecstasy and energy.
Triumphant!!
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