Music from Spain to Latin America

The Tulsa Symphony Orchestra closed its "Around the World" 2009-2010 concert season on May 1 with a night of "Music from Spain to Latin America" conducted by James Bagwell. The fact that the previous concerts in the series all focused exclusively on one country--Germany, Italy, "America" (the United States), England, and France--whereas this concert slides from one side of the Atlantic to the other and back again:

(a) provides for a nice change of pace
(b) allows for a sensational range of pieces
(c) reinforces the perception that all Spanish-speaking (and Portuguese-speaking?) countries are the same
(d) all of the above

The answer is D! It was a terrific concert, just weakly contextualized. The concert series brochure features photos of iconic landmarks, one for each concert page (such as Neuschwanstein Castle for Germany); the featured photo for the "From Spain to Latin America" concert is Pão de Açucar (Sugarloaf Mountain) in Rio, even though no Brazilian or even Brazilian-inspired music appears on the program."Latin America" is a continent-plus sized area of which Argentina, Mexico, and Cuba are featured in the program; surely a better icon could have been selected. And so, in spite of Brazil's internationally famous musical traditions (and the opportunity to include at least Villa-Lobos!), the evening's pieces ranged from a Frenchman's composition about Spain (Chabrier's España) to a Mexican's composition based on a Cuban poem (Revueltas's Sensemayá): I have no complaint about artists finding inspiration anywhere they like, but for a series focused on nationalities, this particular hodgepodge does little to explore the nuances of most people's general understanding of "Latin" identity.

And maybe that's just fine--after all, it's about listening to great music, which this all certainly is. And even by the unrealistic measure of composer nationalities matching national inspirations, four of the six pieces are by composers taking on the styles of their own countries: de Falla's El sombrero de tres picos in Spain; Moncayo's Huapango in Mexico--something of an unofficial national anthem in that nation; and Piazzolla and Ginastera in Argentina, the former's Oblivion and Libertango and a suite of four dances from the latter's Estancia.

Rich Fisher's interview with James Bagwell on Studio Tulsa (KWGS) was very helpful in clarifying early 20th-century composers' experimentation with national identities in music, in all parts of the Americas, and identified the cross-border interest among the French and Spanish, for example. The program notes in Intermission offered insightful information on the composers and their creations as well. But the guest conductor, in his introductions to the compositions during the concert, twice used "Latin American" to mean "Spanish."

I should emphasize that I'm proud of TSO and how they rose from the ashes of the previous symphony organization. I have thoroughly enjoyed every one of their concerts this season. Stand-out performances from this particular concert, in my humble opinion, included their renditions of España, Huapango, and Libertango. And I am glad they brought attention to classical music in Latin America, no matter how obliquely. But I hope that sometime they can offer a concert featuring simply Argentina, Brazil, or Mexico (for example) on its own, equal weight with "America."

The Latin American outlook for next season is mixed, in more than one way: one of the announced concerts is titled "Broadway to Buenos Aires" (January 29, 2011) but with little evident connection to the Argentine capital other than Anderson's Blue Tango and the mythologized figure of Evita Perón through Webber's music. However, I also note that one of the announced guest conductors for next season is Uruguayan Gisele Ben-Dor, known especially for her promotion of works by Ginastera, Revueltas, and Villa-Lobos, among other Latin American composers. On March 12, 2011, she is slated to conduct compositions by Liszt, Prokofiev, and Brahms. It's all in the mix. ¡Viva TSO!