UP ARCO, the string section of the UP Orchestra, warmed the hearts of the audience with its splendid rendition of two Filipino classics during the Festival Concert of All Participants that opened the Budapest Music Festival on 3 July 2015 at the concert hall of the ELTE Radnóti Miklós School in Budapest, Hungary.
The orchestra played Rondino based on a popular Filipino folk song Magtanim ay Di Biro from Antonio Buenaventura’s Children’s Quartet and Francisco Buencamino’s Pizzicato Caprice, a whimsicial composition that showcased the plucking technique in playing the violin.
Conducting the UP ARCO was its director and conductor Prof. Edna Marcil Martínez of the UP College of Music.
The ten-minute performance of the UP ARCO capped the orchestra part of the festival program and elicited a long extended applause from the audience.
The two other orchestras included in the program were the Taipei Philharmonic Youth Ensemble from Taiwan and the Junge Streicher Hamburg from Germany.
The participation of the UP ARCO marks the first time that the Philippines is represented in the prestigious Eastern European music festival.
Aside from the Philippines, twelve other countries are participating in the 3-day festival, namely Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia and Taiwan.
After Budapest, UP ARCO will proceed to Bratislava to compete in another international festival.
(Article and photo contributed by Rubén D.F. Defeo. Photo on the front page also by Rubén D.F. Defeo)
