The Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico City (OFCM) joined this weekend to commemorate the 700 years of the Foundation of the Great Tenochtitlan, capital of the Mexican Empire, with a program in which the borders between times, geographies, Cultures and languages were diluted.
With Eduardo García Barrios of Huésped Director, the poster included the world premiere of Mexican codex: passion, of the young Mexican composer Cristóbal Maryán, as well as the interpretation of Chinampa and Trajinera, by Enrico Chapela, one of the referential authors of national concert music today, and Pictures of an exhibition, Modest Mussorgski, one of the great innovators of Russian music of the romantic period.
In the first of the two concerts, on Saturday – the other was offered yesterday – the public was participating in the revolts of the Ollin Yoliztli Cultural Center of a joyful musical treat in which the mood and emotions were exalted by the vigor and power of those works.
The session opened with the piece of Chapela (Mexico City, 1974), enjoyable sound walk through the Xochimilco channels in which, supported by a mixture between contemporary language and Mexican tonal music, the composer accounts for the wealth of Folk music from various parts of our country that can be heard in this megalopolis.
Released in 2021 in Germany, it is a piece of contemporary and energizing sound, rhythmic at all times, which begins with a kind of reverie, and whose route of almost 15 minutes is impossible not to notice the melodic raigambres that are so own.
Sudden emerges the saloreros song of a marimba that evokes Chiapaneca music; Then, the harp that refers to the sparkling self -confidence of the Jarocho; Later, the languid violins associated with Huapango Huasteco, and the Mariachi festival could not miss with the brilliance of trumpets. An impetuous end to which the public reacted enthusiastically. Present in the room, Chapela took the stage between applause and screams of ¡bravo!
The absolute premiere of Mexican codex: passion, Piece that was accompanied by the projection of an animated short directed by the composer himself, in which he tells in images the historical passages that make up that musical story.
Cristóbal Maryán (Mexico City, 1992) wrote this work in 2021 on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Fall of Tenochtitlan. However, by the pandemic, its premiere was postponed and was recorded that same year online by the Orchestra of the Americas, by parts, and then assembled in postproduction. In that project the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Johnny Gandelsman was invited from soloists.
Conceived as a symphonic codex
That counts The history of the fall of Tenochtitlan and the rebirth of the civilization of modern Mexico, and what has become a template for Latin American contemporary identity
it is a score of narrative and risky cutting, with unconventional sounds that refer to animals, ancient music of the Middle East and Andalusian, periyspanic or periispanic or ritual atmospheres; In short, a sound melting that travels from the whispers of fear and surprise to the stridency of war, of the majesty inherent to an emperor to the lament of defeat.
With the participation of Inna Nassidze in the cello and Wilfredo Pérez Gaydos in the violin, they are just over 15 minutes full of emotional sensations and outbursts with which listening cannot end up not being compensated and exalted. At the end, the public reacted with thunderous ovations.
Interviewed at the end of the concert, Maryán explained that in this piece he uses the musical form of The passion To visit various episodes of that Mexican historical passage: It is an artistic experiment in which I spliced the passion of Christ with the fall of Tenochtitlan: what would have happened if (passion) would have happened here? What symbols would we find?
The evening concluded with Pictures of an exhibition, Mussorgski, in the Orchestra version of Maurice Ravel, in which the OFCM realized the splendid balance and cohesion between its sections, with an impeccable execution, which, once completed, and before the generalized acclamation, forced Eduardo García Barrios Barrios to repeat the last of the 15 pieces of that Suite, kyiv’s great door, Dedicated by the guest director to the great Russian people and that of Ukraine, which at one time were only one
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