Alondra de la Parra will take charge of the Symphony Orchestra Alondra de la Parra yesterday, at the Tenerife Auditorium, during rehearsals with the Tenerife Symphony for two concerts – this Friday at the Alfredo Kraus and this Saturday, January 20, starting at 8:00 p.m. at the Tenerife Auditorium – framed in the 40th edition of the International Music Festival of Canary Islands. It is the first time that this charismatic Mexican director, one of the most important in the world, directs in the Canary Islands.
This Wednesday, during the break from one of her rehearsals, she spoke about how honored she feels to participate in the regional competition. De la Parra will lead the Tenerife formation in a spectacular program that also starts with a piece of John Adams: Short ride in a fast machine. They complete the repertoire Gershwin Piano Concertofor which he will feature the French pianist Thomas Enhcoand the Symphony number 5 of Shostakovich.
The Mexican artist’s figures are impressive. At 43 years old she has conducted more than 100 of the most important orchestras in the world, she is founder and director of the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas since 2004 and since 2022 she is also the guest conductor of the Milan Symphony Orchestra. “I am very excited to be here for the first time at this wonderful festival and to work with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra on a contrasting program with three works of such different styles.”
The director took the opportunity to talk about classical music, its future and the necessary incorporation of younger audiences into concerts. «I think attracting young people and children is very important and relatively easy. The only thing you have to achieve is to bring them to the concert halls and once they are there they love it, that’s how it is. The challenge, she considered, is to be able to communicate adequately with the audiences “And there you, the media, are essential.”
«Being in Tenerife in January is poetry with this weather and these kind people»
After creating the scenic project The Silence of Sound –where the world of clowning merges with music– De la Parra assured that he never conceived it as something aimed at a specific type of audience. «It is a project aimed at children from zero to 100 or 120 years old. I always see children in the stalls, perhaps they are children of an older age who have already realized that what we offer is interesting. “It’s not that the audiences are aging, it’s that we found out too late how beautiful it is.”
He also reflected on the future of classical music. “I love the 20th century, especially at the beginning, the music of the 20s and 30s,” she explained. A historical context that he considered very similar to the current one. “In hard times there is always a creative awakening, the positive part of the negative is that creativity bubbles and today, one hundred years later, look at what a terrible moment we find ourselves in.”
In addition to working intensely on rehearsals, De la Parra has had the opportunity to get to know the Island well and enjoy its temperatures. “I love being able to be here in January, it is poetry to be in this climate and with these kind people.”
He also spoke about the difficulties of his profession, regardless of being a man or a woman. “Being an orchestra conductor is extremely difficult because it requires developing many aspects.” In fact, after 20 years conducting professional orchestras, “I’m only now starting to feel like I really understand how to do it. That’s why the greatest directors are those who are in their 60s or 70s. Only when you have been there for many years do you begin to understand well how this beautiful mechanism that is an orchestra works », he concluded before continuing with the preparations for his first two concerts in the Archipelago.
