The Mexican Tenors Rolando Villazon and Arturo ChaconGreek violinist Leonidas Kavakos and composer Thomas Adés are part of the musical offer UNAM’s year-end event, which also pays tribute to the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters on its centenary with works inspired by literature.
“In just one week we will have two of the most important players in the Nezahualcóyotl room. greatest tenors in the world; on Tuesday, September 24, to Rolando Villazón; and on Sunday, September 29, to Arturo Chacón, within the UNAM Culture Festival,” highlighted in an interview the general director of UNAM Music, José Julio Díaz Infante.
With the operatic gala “L’Arte del Bel Canto”, Rolando Villazon returns to Mexican stages after a 14-year absence, and yesterday he gave a talk at the Simón Bolívar amphitheater at the Colegio de San Ildefonso.
AND Arturo Chacon will be accompanied by the Eduardo Mata University Youth Orchestra (OJUEM), directed by Gustavo Rivero Weber, in a recital for the centenary of the death of Giacomo Puccini (November 29, 1924), Puccini and his world.
“We are very happy to have the return of Arturo Chacón to the Mexican stages and what better than with the OJUEM, with this gala in honor to the Italian maestro,” said the director about this gala with which the orchestra starts its season with a luxury guest that closes the December 15th.
Program with inclusion
Regarding the last season of the year of the UNAM Philharmonic Orchestra (Ofunam), Díaz Infante explained that an inclusive and multidisciplinary program was prepared, in which women are present in almost all concerts, such as conductors, soloists or composerswith a theme that unites music and literature, in commemoration of the centenary of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (August 22).
“We have taken special care of the issue of inclusionnot only in the gender area, but also in incorporating high-level proposals from Mexican creators. Although it is our policy throughout the year, for this third season of Ofunam we have sought to have one, two or three leading roles of the concerts there is a woman, either as a soloist, director or composer, and in some programs they are even in all three categories,” said the director.
He gave as an example the program of Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 October, in which the Brazilian Ligia Amado directs Ofunam in Trois femmes de légende, by the French composer Melanie Bonisabout three notable female figures in history, mythology or literature: Salome, Ophelia and Cleopatra; and the French-Lithuanian pianist The Mother of God She is the soloist in Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
He stressed the importance of offering music not only from living female composersbut also those who were relegated or had to use male pseudonyms. For this season alone, she said there are works by nine female composers, seven of them living; and of 15 Mexican female composers, 11 of them living.
When a brilliant tenor and a gifted pianist come together, pure magic happens. @ArturoChaconC sings “La media Revolución” in this incomparable concert in Miami. I hope to experience another amazing concert with Arturo Chacón-Cruz and Roberto Berrocal.
Maybe…????❣️???? pic.twitter.com/oV3OGDWy1S— Heidrun Haag (@HeidrunHaag) September 22, 2024
Kavakos debuts in Mexico
The extraordinary program that Ofunam will offer on Friday 29 and Saturday 30 November stands out, with the Greek violinist and conductor Leonidas Kavakoswho will debut in Mexico with the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, by Johannes Brahms, with its principal conductor, Sylvain Gasançonin the baton.
“Kavakos has been very accessibleis looking forward to coming to Mexico. Regardless of his great and indisputable technique and interpretive quality, he is an artist who connects very well with the public, in addition to having great openness and approach to other artists, he has just been with Yo-Yo Ma and Emmanuel Ax, and he is very interested in academic outreach work,” said Díaz Infante about the Greek debut at concerts organized by the Board of Trustees and the Society of Friends of Ofunam.
He explained that Kavakos proposed to interpret the Brahms concerto and announced that for the two November concerts the traditional order of the concertante work in the program will be altered, which will no longer be played before, but after the intermission, following the Prelude and Death of Isolde, of the opera Tristan and Isoldeby Richard Wagner, and the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Just the pieces of Wagner and Tchaikovsky They are part of the music-literature thematic axis of Ofunam.
“We have formed, together with maestro Sylvain Gasançon, the musicians of the Ofunam and directors, a third season in which the literature and music are the guiding thread or the theme. There are emblematic works that unite both disciplines, three within the UNAM Culture Festival“, said Diaz Infante.
In the repertoire, which ranges from classical pieces to world premierescompositions related to Dante’s Divine Comedy stand out Alighierior the classical theatre of William Shakespeare.
In the case of the Tuscan Renaissance poet, the Dante Symphony will be presented, Franz Liszt; Francesca da Rimini, from Tchaikovskyand Inferno, by the contemporary London composer Thomas Adès (1971), whose operas The Tempest, based on the work of the same name by Shakespeareand The Exterminating Angel, inspired by the film by Luis Buñuel, thanks to live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York (MetOpera).
“The Divine Comedy works as an opening of the season because the Dante Symphony This will be the first program directed by our principal conductor of the Ofunam, Sylvain Gasançon. We open with Liszt’s Dante (September 21 and 22) and close in the last concert (December 7 and 8) with Inferno, by Adès, its premiere in Mexico, which is a very ambitious workpart of a ballet, based precisely on Liszt’s Dante Symphony, so in a way it closes the circle, it serves as a culmination,” he explained.
Regarding the Elizabethan playwright, Díaz Infante highlighted the stage project that can be seen in October at the Nezahualcoyotl about A Midsummer Night’s Dream with incidental music by Felix Mendelssohn and staging by Juliana Faesler inspired by Rehearsal for an Orchestra, the film by Federico Fellini.
“It is precisely this relationship between music and literature “It allows us to tackle stage projects in which multidisciplinarity is also important,” said the university official responsible for the music sector.
More music
He also highlighted that in the 7th program of Ofunam in mid-November the song will be performed Egmontcomposed by Ludwig van Beethoven based on the homonymous tragedy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but not only the overture, as is usually done, but all its scenes, in which the soprano will participate as a soloist Anabel de la Morawho will also sing in Maurice Ravel’s Shéhérazade, inspired by the heroine of The Thousand and One Nights, with the actress Haydee Boetto in the narrative.
The Manfredo Symphony is added to the season, Tchiakovsky based on the poem by Lord Byron.
Díaz Infante also announced that Ofunam is once again leaving its headquarters in the University Cultural Center to now close the Morelia International Music Festival on November 23.
The cultural offering of the UNAM includes concerts of ancient and traditional music, in the Carlos Chávez halls and the Simón Bolívar amphitheater, with groups such as the Valencian ensemble Harmony of Parnassusled by harpsichordist and conductor Marian Rosa Montagut; the Spanish-Mexican ensemble Il Furore and the Canadian violinist Marc Destrubé; the Academy of Early Music (AMA), directed by Eunice Padilla; and the groups Los Pream and Los Descarados, among others.
“I would say it is a season of inclusive music at UNAM,” summarized José Julio Díaz Infante.
The programming of the third season of Ofunam is here.
BSMM
