Leo Brouwer Music Festival

Writing about the Leo Brouwer Music Festival - it clings to the name chamber music festival but is much broader than that - is hard precisely because it is so large and so eclectic that no short description seems possible.  A perfect connection, combination, union of intelligent music is the official description. Genre-bender Leo Brouwer sees not only the connections between many types of music - everything first-rate of its kind and nothing trite or over-exposed - but between music and the other arts.  The festival includes concerts, plastic art exhibits, film, and dance, but mostly concerts.

Every year, and this is my third Festival, (the Festival itself is 5 years old), I get my mind and my tastes expanded a bit.  Last year a standout concert for me was Sytse Buwalda, the male contralto.  But I thought I didn't even like countertenors.  A huge unexpected pleasure this year was Il Dilirio Fantastico, a French early music group, especially Virginie Botty on recorder, (that boring instrument, I had felt - I used to play it.)

The biggest thing for me this year was unexpected and very moving - I heard Leo Brouwer play guitar.  He came out with a guitar in hand for the last piece on the Pablo Milanés half of the  concert Amor  de Ciudad Grande, played an introduction to the piece that included one of the estudios sencillos, and accompanied the song.  Wild rumor ran through the hall - he'd had an operation and his hand was now OK, he would resume playing in public.  Unfortunately, this was false - he played with thumb and 2 fingers as a tribute to friendship and to José Martí.  Not at all incidentally, the two pieces by Brouwer which opened this concert - Es el amor que se ve, written in 1972 for voice, flute, violin, cello, piano, guitar and vibraphone; and Elegías Martianas written in 2009 for flute and piano - were stunning. This festival will be a revelation for those who think of  Brouwer as a "guitar composer."   He is that, also, but  most of his work is for other instruments.

So what else did I hear?

            An organ concert starting with a piece by Arnolt Schlick (15th C.) and ending with Bach and Vivaldi.  A concert by Paco de Lucía and his group.  A concert that sandwiched works by Vivaldi with Minimalist works, including Steve Reich, Michael Torke, Brouwer, John Adams, Terry Riley - I got to hear "In C" live.  A concert with chamber music by and about Verdi and Wagner.  A concert with music by Brazilian composers - I was expecting the usual charming light-weight pieces and I was quite surprised: of course Brazil has composers who are part of their culture but not tied to folkloric music.  Did I expect that Villa Lobos would be an isolated artist? 
            A concert of choral music by Cuban composers, and later the same day a concert of Brouwer works interpreted as flamenco.  A concert dedicated to Benjamin Britten, with  his Green Broom and The Evening Primrose for chorus, and the Sonata Op 60 for cello and piano - stunning-, and works by Hindemith (The Sonatina Canonica for 2 flutes Op 31, which was like being in a magic forest in a dream with the best possible sounding birds in the world), Brouwer, Alvarez, and Popper, plus Arvo Part's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten.  This concert featured Douglas Vistel on cello, who was so good it was startling.  Cello, like choral music and guitar, seems to be a Cuban strength.  Young Cuban cellist Alejandro Martinez is very very good indeed and some day I will be proud to say "I knew him when..."  Vistel, with his wife Almuth Krauber on piano, is the amazing Berlin-based Duo Cello Capriccioso - hear them if you possibly can.

            The concert Sonatas, Concertos y Fantasias, in the beautiful old church San Francisco de Asís, with Scarlatti, Mudarra, Sanz, de Murzia - and Brouwer - played on baroque guitar, lute and ...electric guitar... (I admit this latter didn't work for me.  It didn't work for the church's electrical system either, and somehow caused the organ of Il Dilirio Fantastico to burn-out something.  A longer than planned intermission occurred while Vincent Bernhardt tuned the harpsichord so that the concert could proceed.)  The second half was all Vivaldi Concerti and never needed to end, really.  Yes, there's a lot more to Vivaldi than Four Seasons.  A Lecuona concert.  A flamenco concert with a flamenco purist from a long tradition, Carlos Piñana (unlike fusion players like Tacoronte and, yes, de Lucía). A Benny Moré tribute concert.  There were also mini-concerts associated with the conferences, and some miscellaneous which was enjoyable, and a lot of movies and jam sessions which I missed but which sounded as if they were interesting and fun.  I'm tired of typing, though, and this is long enough.

            There are some things you can count on at the Leo Brouwer Chamber Music Festival.  You will hear music played by excellent artists, both Cuban and international, in well thought out programs.  You will not hear any warhorses, and will have the opportunity to expand your knowledge and taste.  You will hear lots of Brouwer, almost all of it works you were not familiar with.  You will see lots of Brouwer, too; this is truly his festival and his vitality and intensity as a conductor and as a person will impress you.  As the festival grows, he has become increasing busy, but he's very gracious and you'll have time for a brief chat or two.  It will be  great fun and just a tiny bit over the top.  You will not have time for everything.  Something unexpected will happen that will make you feel happy and fortunate.

footnote: El hombre escapa'o

In one of the conferences, José Martí was quoted to the effect that "La música es el hombre escapado de si mismo."  Later that night, after the concert, I got a ride home (you stand on the right street, stick out your hand, a jitney cab stops or sometimes someone who's driving the work-truck home and just wants to make the 10 pesos - this was the latter.)  Where was I coming home from?  A Leo Brouwer Festival concert.  " Leo Brouwer? Este hombre es escapa'o!" Cuban slang for totally awesome, involved heart and soul.  I was struck by the coincidence, but not by the fact that a random person driving home has an opinion about the country's leading composer.  That's just Cuba.

Maestro Brouwer

This is the organizing genius who puts together this festival - Musicologist Isabelle Hernandez
It must require the combined talents of a caterpillar tractor, a ballet dancer, a senior diplomat, and, Oh Yes, a musicologist.
(She's married to Leo.)

After a chamber music concert in the beautiful Basilica Menor del Convento de San Francisco de Asis, the audience danced through the streets behinds sanqueros on stilts to Casa de Africa for another concert.  

If there are few concert pictures here, it's because my camera just wasn't up to the challenge of movement in darkness.

with Pedro Chamorro and one of the organizers

Edin Karamazov, Sytse Buwalda, and Leo Brouwer

with Eusebio Leal, historiador de la ciudad, responsible for much of the restoration of Old Havana

A concert in the park

Conferences were held in the Antigua Casino Español, and students,
as well as other members of the public were invited.

with Saskia Spinder

 Sytse Buwalda, Dutch contralto

Joe Ott Pons, guitarist.
He won the Premio Espiral Eterna for musicians in 2012

Artists from Grupo Giganteria acted as auxiliary ushers

Costa Rican composer Marvin Camacho performing his own work.

Cellist Alejandro Martinez and Percussionist Eilyn Marquetti Gonzalez
creating the first performance of a work by Costa Rican composer Eddie Mora

Cellist Alejandro Martinez
won the Espiral Eterna musicians prize in 2011

ofibrouwer@cubarte.cult.cu
Berta Rojas and Bobby McFerrin, among others, will be at the 6th annual Leo Brouwer Chamber Music Festival
September 27 to October 12 2014

The organizers, hard at work, but not showing any sweat.