The BBC Philharmonic begins today, Thursday, at 8:00 p.m., in the Alfredo Kraus auditorium, the 39th Canary Islands International Music Festival, under the baton of Juanjo Mena and repeats tomorrow, at the same time, in the Tenerife Auditorium. The concert will have a Spanish role as the English orchestra will begin by interpreting the Dances of Don Quixote, by the Catalan composer Roberto Gerhard. The British formation will record two pieces with “those that will complete the entire musical repertoire of the Spanish author”. This was stated by the director himself in a presentation that took place this morning in which he was accompanied by the President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, and the director of the Music Festival, Jorge Perdigón.
Torres highlighted “the magnificent program” with “its leap in quality” year after year. And he highlighted the presence of the kyiv Symphony Orchestra, which will perform on February 9, and which will also be in Tenerife and Fuerteventura, highlighting the interpretation of the symphony no 3 by Boris Lyatoshinsky titled peace defeats war.
“I don’t go to festivals with orchestras that I don’t deal with,” added the Bilbao-born director. “But the Philharmonic was very important to my career and it is one of the best orchestras in England,” he added. In addition, Mena recalled that he was his artistic director for nine years at a time when other orchestras in America had offered him, “but I wanted to stay with her to be able to progress.” The conductor stressed that it is a “very versatile, fast and intense” orchestra with a spectacular work rate, capable of performing three or four programs in a week and “knowing exactly how to play”. Mena recalled that Gerhard had to leave Barcelona for England fleeing the war and although the English consider him their own author “it is a continuity of Falla”, something that is noticeable, “especially on the piano”. From his point of view, “this is a person who must be recovered” because he was “an open door to contemporary music”.
The circumstance occurs that the second piece, Violin Concerto, Op. fifteen, by Benjamin Britten also has to do with our country because he wrote “his first concert dedicated to the English soldiers who died in the Spanish civil war”. Here, the director highlighted the work of the Korean violinist Clara Jumi-Kang “of fantastic intelligence” for a piece “that mixes drama.”
The third part of the program is occupied by three works by Maurice Ravel, who has chosen them “to send a message of joy after what they have suffered with the volcano” and which will end with the Bolero “which acquires enormous force live to end the program brilliantly.”
Finally, Jorge Perdigón highlighted that almost 50% of the programming “we will hear it for the first time at the Festival” and the presence of the Scottish String Orchestra that will perform the premiere of the festival by Laura Vega on February 4 entitled Light, love and ecstasy, Concerto for guitar and orchestra.
