The College of Music is proud to present a concert of Philippine original solo piano music from the end of the Spanish colonial period to the time of the first Philippine republic in 1960s. It will be held on 7 December 2015 at 6:30 p.m. at the Abelardo Hall Auditorium.
To be played by visiting artist from Dartmouth College, Sally Pinkas, the program consists of short compositions in light cosmopolitan music styles such as waltz, mazurka, nocturne, habanera, serenade, and so on. These works were written by three generations of composers who lived in Manila: from Hispanic Ignacio Massaguer to the first Filipino woman composer Dolores Paterno, who belonged to the first generation; Marcelo Adonay, Julio Nakpil, and Lorenzo Ilustre of the second generation, and composers of the third generation such as Valdes y Pica, Francisco Buencamino Sr., Nicanor Abelardo, Juan Sahagun de Hernandez, Antonio J. Molina, and partly Lucino T. Sacramento.
The repertoire of this historically valuable concert captures a wide range of moods such as the expression of romantic intimacies as in Buencaminos’ Damdamin, Molina’s Cradle Song, and Sacramento’s Romance; the refined and exquisite dances of Adonay’s waltz and mazurka and Santiago’s Purita, all three of which were presentation music gifted to women; the evocative, though parodic, piano art music of Abelardo’s First Nocturne, Molina’s Malikmata, and Santiago’s Nocturne in E-flat Minor; the commemorative patriotism of Nakpil’s Pahimakas and Pasig-Pantayanin, and representations of Filipino femininity such as Paterno’s La Flor de Manila (Sampaguita) and Molina’s Camia. The rest of the program are character pieces such as Massaguer’s La Bella Filipina (originally a song), Hernandez’s Caress, Buencamino’s Smile, and Nakpil’s Recuerdos de Capiz. Most of the music in this concert were once circulated as sheet music among the affluent piano-owning middle class in Manila, i.e., at a time when urbanization and capitalism took root in the city.
Admission ticket is at 300 pesos, with a 20% discount to senior citizens and UP faculty members and 50% discount to students with valid IDs.