SFIPF: A Hispanic Finale

Late yesterday afternoon the San Francisco International Piano Festival concluded with a program entitled Maurizio – Ravel’s Basque & Spanish Masterpieces. The title of the program refers to Maurice Ravel’s origins. He was born on March 7, 1875 in the Basque region, specifically in the French town of Ciboure, near the better-known Biarritz. His father was born in Versoix, near the border with Switzerland; but his mother, born Marie Delouart, was Basque.

The first half of yesterday’s program (which, due to other circumstances, was all I was able to view through my livestream source), featured three Spanish composers (in order of appearance): Manuel de Falla, Enrique Granados, and Joaquín Rodrigo. Paul Sánchez and Asiya Korepanova gave a two-piano account of Rodrigo’s five short pieces collected under the title Piezas infantiles. In the absence of any introduction, it was unclear whether this was music to be played by the young or whether it evoked youthful behavior.

Indeed, no background material was provided regarding any of the compositions or the performers. If the music was familiar, such as the two-piano version of Emanuel Chabrier’s “España” (performed by the same duo), one could appreciate the familiar rhetorical context. On the other hand, the Rodrigo set was a journey of discovery (and may have been my first encounter with one of his compositions that did not involve the guitar). Ironically, in spite of its brevity, I came away recalling the classic phrase from the play Amadeus about “too many notes!”

Paul Sanchez accompanying Esther Rayo in her performance of Maurice Ravel’s “Vocalise” (screen shot from the YouTube video of the performance)

The program began with a survey of vocal works by Falla, Ravel, and Debussy sung by soprano Esther Rayo. In this set Ravel was represented by his “Vocalise en forme d’étude,” which has been a personal favorite for some time. Sadly, Rayo took a forceful approach which undermined the cloying subtlety of Ravel’s rhetoric. This was followed by a selection from the first book on the Goyescas collection by Enrique Granados, which Sánchez delivered with excessive affectation. Taken as a whole, the first half of the program did little to meet the expectations promised by the program’s title.