‘Chopin was Cuban.’ 

Paquito D’Rivera

'Clara Rodríguez is a poet of the piano.'

Antonio Estévez

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How might Chopin’s music sound if the composer had been born in the Caribbean? Whilst Chopin never crossed the Atlantic (the closest he would ever get to a tropical island would be a sojourn on Mallorca in 1838-9), his influence on the ebullient classical music scene of the 19th-century Antilles was superlative. At a time when many Latin Americans were fighting to achieve independence from Europe, Chopin offered an enticing model of musical nationalism with which they could construct new musical identities. These hybrid cultures identified with Chopin’s exiled condition; as Chopin sought refuge in the Polish folk melodies of his mazurkas, so did Caribbeans embrace local valses, danzas and contradanzas into their works. The last and most famous of these Caribbean Romantics, the virtuosic Cuban pianist-composer Ernesto Lecuona (1895-1963), would himself come to be known as ‘The Chopin of the Caribbean’.

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In this event, pre-eminent Latin American pianists Clara Rodríguez and Gustavo Corrales Romero join forces to pay tribute to the 2017 anniversaries of two great figureheads of Romantic Antillean music: Cuban composer Manuel Saumell (1817-1870), and from the Caribbean mainland, Venezuelan composer Teresa Carreño (1853-1917). Both leading exponents and international ambassadors of this unique repertoire, they present a colourful programme blending Romantic lyricism with authentic, toe-tapping rhythms, including music for 4 hands.

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Frédéric Chopin Ballade No. 1

Manuel Saumell Contradanzas (Selection)

Teresa Carreño La fausse note | La corbeille de fleurs | Elegía No. 1

Louis Moreau Gottschalk Ojos criollos (Danse cubaine)

Ernesto Lecuona 19th-Century Cuban Dances (Selection) | Mazurka en glissando

Ignacio Cervantes Danzas (Selection)

Wim Statius Muller Waltzes (Selection)
Karen D. Russel de Corrales Sarabandio

Luis González Valdés Danzas (Selection)

Ludovic Lamothe La dangereuse (Haitian merengue)

Juan Carlos Núñez Retrato de Ramón Delgado-Palacios
Moisés Moleiro Joropo

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PLUS Enjoy a drink whilst you listen!

(Bar opens before the performance and during the interval)

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Clara Rodríguez piano

Gustavo Corrales Romero piano
 

Organised by ILAMS with the kind support of KyG Productions