Remembering "Montes"

“Montes” is, of course, the title of my String Quartet No. 1. But, more importantly, it is the surname of the great painter to whom the quartet is an homage, Fernando Montes (1930-2007).

 

There is a post somewhere in this blog about that musical work and the paintings each of its movements is based on. I refrain from giving the link here since the migration of this blog to a new website is now imminent and I prefer to avoid saddling this text with a broken link.

 

Recently the Americas Society posted a remembrance of the work’s New York première (the world première had been in Philadelphia in the presence of the painter's widow). I am pleased to provide a link for that (see video). The work of the splendid players of the Momenta Quartet deserves exposure. 

 

Correction: on quick inspection I find no previous post where I specify the correspondence between Montes's paintings and the three movements of the Quartet. They are: 1. City of Silence, 2. The Gate of the Moon, 3. Music and Land. You can find other information on this String Quartet's past by clicking on the "Fernando Montes" tag. 

"Montes" es, claro está, el título de mi Cuarteto de cuerdas No. 1. Pero, más importante que eso, Montes es el apellido del gran pintor a quien la obra musical rinde homenaje, Fernando Montes (1930-2007).

 

Hay un artículo en alguna parte de este blog que trata de esa obra musical y de las pinturas de Montes sobre las que cada uno de los movimientos del Cuarteto está basado. Me abstengo de poner el enlace aquí ya que la migración de este blog a un nuevo sitio de internet es inminente y no quiero dejar esta página con un enlace roto. 

 

Hace poco la Sociedad de las Américas de Nueva York publicó una remembranza del estreno neoyorquino del Cuarteto (el estreno absoluto fue en Filadelfia y contó con la presencia de la viuda del pintor). Para eso sí me place proporcionar el enlace (ver video). El trabajo de los espléndidos ejecutantes del Cuarteto Momenta merece difusión. 

 

Corrección: haciendo un repaso rápido no encuentro un artículo que especifique la correspondencia entre los tres movimientos del Cuarteto y las obras de Montes que los inspiraron. Ellas son 1. Ciudad de silencio, 2. La puerta de la luna, 3. Música y Tierra. Hay, sí, otras informaciones sobre este Cuarteto; las puede encontrar pulsando en la etiqueta "Fernando Montes".

The Spirit of the Andes

Verónica Souto. Photograph by Richard Strike

While on the subject of the Momenta Quartet’s performance of my String Quartet No. 1 ‘Montes’, I recommend a beautiful film: The Spirit of the Andes by Verónica Souto. It is a documentary on the life and work of Fernando Montes, the painter.

The film charts a life’s progress from bohemian La Paz in the 1930s to life as a student in Buenos Aires, world-watching in London cafés in the 1960s and ending with the high-profile international exhibitions in Montes’s mature years. Throughout, the film explores the constant concern with the Andean landscape, which Montes developed into a very personal approach characterised by subtle introspection and simplicity.

It will be shown on Saturday 12 July at 6PM in Culture Lab, Newcastle University.

Momenta in Newcastle!

Photograph by John Gurrin

I am thrilled to announce that the Momenta Quartet, unforgettable heroes of the première of of my String Quartet last year in Philadelphia, will be in Newcastle in the flesh. They will be taking part in the ¡Vamos! Festival with two performances.

On Friday 11 July the Momenta will take part in the festival launch at Northern Stage, playing my Montes and an array of other new Latin American music. The violist Stephanie Griffin and the cellist Joanne Lin will stun their audience with two solo pieces by the Brazilian maverick Arthur Kampela. You can actually see and hear one of them, Bridges for solo viola, on Kampela's myspace page. This programme will also include Oleajes by the Colombian composer Alba Potes, and the world première of a new work by my fellow Bolivian Cergio Prudencio. Cergio is currently the most active composer in Bolivia, and he has secured a place in history by co-founding - with his brother José Luis - and work for three decades as the musical director of the Experimental Orchestra of Native Instruments (OEIN). This evening there will be plenty of other musical goodies on offer, which you can look up on the ¡Vamos! Festival programme.

On Saturday 12 July the Momenta will play at King's Hall, Newcastle University. My String Quartet No 1 'Montes' will get a second airing, preceded by another impressive selection out of the Momenta's contemporary repertoire, including two very new pieces written for them by composers based here in the Northeast of England. These will be chosen out of a workshop I have organised with students from Newcastle and Durham universities: Matthew Rowan, Helen Papaioannou, Tom Albans and Eric Egan. Which of these will be chosen? That will be the surprise of the evening. The programme will also include Instantes by the young Venezuelan composer Manena Contreras and Four Pieces for String Quartet one of the fathers of contemporary Cuban music, Alejandro García Caturla.

Connected with the Momenta visit and with my work, there will be a screening of the beautiful documentary by Verónica Souto The Spirit of the Andes exploring the life and work of the Bolivian painter Fernando Montes. This will be at Newcastle University's Culture Lab. The eminent director will be with us to introduce her film.

Details and tickets are available on the ¡Vamos! website. Or you can book directly with Northern Stage, by clicking here or phoning 0191 230 5151.

'Montes' at Bolivar Hall

Jane Gordon, Adrian Charlesworth, Sara Jones and Jennifer Morsches. In the first image, I am acknowledging the Montes family who are in the audience. Photos by Richard Strike.

UK Première of String Quartet No 1 ‘Montes’

This was an intense experience. The music’s dedicatee, Fernando Montes, presided over the proceedings as if he were still here. His family did most of the organisational work making the event possible, whereas my music and, to a larger extent, Verónica Souto’s film The Spirit of the Andes, brought Montes’s work alive in front of an audience that was made up of Montes’s friends and admirers.

The string quartet experience was very different from the Philadelphia story. First of all, the London-based players were not a pre-existing string quartet, but came together especially for the occasion. This in itself was a considerable organisational challenge which started from the recruitment of the players. At the early stages of planning, if the project was deemed possible at all it had been because a string quartet of young, enthusiastic, new-music loving players, mainly Venezuelans, was deemed to be available to Bolivar Hall. When I made the necessary contact to ascertain the existence, youth and enthusiasm of the players I found that their existence and youth were a distinct possibility, but their enthusiasm was conspicuous by its absence. By this time the project preparations had taken off: the plan was to mark the first anniversary of Montes’s death at Bolivar Hall on 17 January, with a projection of Souto’s film and a performance of my quartet. Many people were working on that assumption. There was no turning back.

At this point enter Jennifer Morsches. She was remembered by the Montes family as a recent, but devoted friend of Fernando’s, and she was remembered by me as the excellent cellist who worked with Florilegium and whom I had seen, much to my surprise, playing romantic and twentieth-century music with Elizabeth Schwimmer in Cochabamba, Bolivia. On being approached about this project she showed unequivocal enthusiasm, and soon she was to prove true to her word. She took on the recruitment of the other players and the planning of the rehearsals, including the offer of her own house for them. When recruitment proved harder than expected her commitment was unwavering. She did not falter even when, two days before the first rehearsal and five days before the concert, her colleague Rodolfo Richter, appointed first violin, announced that he was pulling out because of a severe eye infection that required immediate surgery. Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 were spent in a flurry of phone calls between Jennifer, me and possible Richter replacements. The quartet seemed doomed to cancellation, but the thought of doing that to the Montes family was hard to stomach. Somehow Jennifer's perseverance worked its magic, and by Sunday evening a replacement was in place in the form of Jane Gordon, violinist of the Rautio Trio.

I stayed out of the players’ way the day of the first rehearsal, Monday 14 January, and took the train down to London on the Tuesday. I found the players immersed in their discovery of the piece and of each other, riding on the crest of a very steep learning curve. The piece was new to them, so was the style, and so were they to each other. They were not exactly gliding over, but they were not sinking either. Good spirits saved them, and Jane Gordon saved them by taking the reins and leading with a firm hand. By the end of Tuesday the piece was far from ready, but the spirits far from broken.

On Wednesday, the day before the concert, there was to be no rehearsal because of another concert involving our superb cellist, by the early music group Florilegium. I knew this splendid ensemble since our Bolivian venture in 2005, so I took the opportunity to go and hear them. It was a lunchtime concert, in the bowels of Imperial College. The difficulties of finding this secret location even well after reaching the Imperial campus meant that I got there only for the second piece. I was taken aback by the sight of their virtuoso director, Ashley Solomon, playing Mozart with his foot in an elaborate contraption that appeared designed to keep his toes together. But more than that, I was taken aback by the sight of the violinist, Rodolfo Richter, playing with great aplomb and reading with seemingly unbloodied eyes from a music stand like everybody else, displaying an ocular resilience I had not thought him capable of in his current state. If anybody ever doubted that Mozart’s music can be miraculous, here was the proof. It heals the soul, it heals the eyes. The concert was truly enlightening. And Jennifer was the magnificent player I had always known her to be.

On Thursday 17 January, a year to the day since the death of Fernando Montes, a documentary about him and a string quartet about him received their British premières at London’s Bolivar Hall. Tickets had sold out weeks in advance. The Chairman of the Anglo-Bolivian Society, David Minter, gave a fitting tribute to the artist in his introductory address. Then I introduced the piece outlining each movement’s connection with a Montes painting. Vince Harris helped with the projection of the relevant paintings. Then my four friends played the string quartet, with an assurance that belied the short preparation time and a commitment that did not fail to stir and move. Then Verónica Souto introduced her film, and then the programme closed with the film itself.

It was a memorable occasion in many respects. Clearly Fernando Montes was foremost in the minds and hearts of all present. Several people had travelled a long way, some from abroad, for the occasion. It was an act of group catharsis, where the music and the film provided the ritual’s structure. I found it all deeply moving.

UK première of 'Montes'

Following the Momenta Quartet's concert in Philadelphia, there will be a performance, here in the UK, of my String Quartet No. 1, 'Montes'. Fittingly, it will be part of an evening celebrating the life and the work of the Bolivian painter Fernando Montes to be held at Bolívar Hall, London. This means that the music, born of a reflection of three of Montes's works, after a circuitous journey will come home, to London, where Montes spent most of his professional life and created most of his work.

The players are not a constituted quartet but will get together specially for this concert. They are Jane Gordon and Adrian Charlesworth, violins, Sara Jones, viola, and the dynamo driving this UK première, the impressive cellist Jennifer Morsches.

On this occasion there will also be another important première, that of the documentary The Spirit of The Andes by Verónica Souto.

This is purely for information, since at the time of writing all tickets have sold out, but, for what it's worth, the performance will take place on Thursday 17 January at 1930 in Bolívar Hall, London.

Première of String Quartet No. 1, 'Montes', in Philadelphia

Miranda Cuckson (violin), Stephanie Griffin (viola), me (composer), Joanne Lin (cello), Annaliesa Place (violin). In the first image, said with Mrs Marcela Montes, widow of the painter Fernando Montes.

It happened last 28 November in Rock Hall Auditorium at Temple University. The performers were the Momenta Quartet, a group for whom I have to check myself if I am not to run out of superlatives. I apologise in advance if I fail.

When I first met them, two days before the concert, they had the new piece learned. Our work together had to do with character, articulation, balance, in a word: interpretation. No complaints about how difficult the music was, no excuses about an unlearned passage, no petty quibbling! Only intelligent requests of clarification, sometimes exposing an inconsistence on my part or leading me to rethink a notational choice.

It was immediately apparent that the Momenta were more than used to working with composers, as the dynamic in rehearsal was one of ease and flowing communication when required. As impressive as this was the respect they showed each other, with no player imposing her view on any other, but instead careful consideration being given to their diverse, strong individualities.

Anyone inferring the result of the above to be a harmonious but bland compromise would be mistaken, for there is plenty of edge in what the Momenta do. Their explosions of energy and passion are as fearful as the ice of their tightest, most controlled pianissimos. Yes, I am no longer referring only to their rendition of my own piece, but also remembering what they did, for example, with Janácek’s Quartet No. 1, 'Kreutzer Sonata'. The passion overflowed without sentimentality, the tragedy raged without melodrama. It was all just so well gauged. And the technique was accomplished throughout; with them we are in a sphere where technique ceased to be a concern at some forgotten point in the past of their young lives.

As for me, I had one of the most enjoyable experiences ever. I was able to sit back, secure in the knowledge that my music was in safe hands, that I did not have to worry about whether this or that passage would come out as written. It came out as written, but better, because it was enriched by the total commitment of these incomparable four musicians. The words 'thank you' sound too hollow to convey my gratitude and admiration for what they do.

The only disappointment of the evening was the small size of the audience, well below what these superb performers deserved. As the talented composition student Ryan Olivier explained to me, this was a hectic time of the year when the students have to split their time among a vast array of concerts and their own assessed recitals at Temple University. Fair enough, but what a loss for the rest of Philadelphia not to have been there! Setting aside the two new works, you do not often hear Janácek and Schumann played with that excellence. The silver lining for me was the presence of Marcela Montes, widow of Fernando, the great Bolivian painter who inspired my quartet and to whom it is dedicated. With Marcela was a small but important group of Bolivians, two of whom I had known in the 1970s in La Paz: Mrs Ximena Iturralde de Sánchez de Lozada and her son Ignacio.

The composition staff was represented by two lecturers who were generous in their enthusiasm, Prof Maurice Wright and one other whose pardon I beg, in the unlikely event he reads these pages, for forgetting his name. Nor can I link him to any of the composition lecturers listed among the composition staff on the Temple website. Their kindly-expressed empathy to the spirit to the quartet was to me an indication of an attunement of mind that makes me want to hear their music.

Young Ryan Olivier himself had a piece premièred, String Quartet. It was impressive in the assurance with which it adhered to an energetic gesturality that is so often lacking in new music. You can hear it on his myspace page. He is a most personable individual too. I think he will go far.

I thank the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University for putting on this event and for their hospitality to me.

New work: String Quartet No 1 'Montes'

Llojeta by Fernando Montes (photograph by Vince Harris, reproduced by permission)

This project is a collaboration with the Momenta String Quartet of New York, who will be performing the new piece at the Rock Hall Auditorium, Temple University, Philadelphia, on 28 November.

The title is a homage to the Bolivian painter Fernando Montes, who died in London last January. Even though he spent much of his life in London, Montes's work is a pure and concentrated distillation of the landscape and soul of Bolivia. Looking at his work, aside from deriving great aesthetic pleasure, I feel impelled to reassess my own position vis-à-vis my native country. It is a temptation to aspire to be to Bolivia in music what Montes is to Bolivia in art.

The new string quartet looks the concept of bolivianity in the face, in its many-sided contradictions and with that painful detachment from the physical reality of the country that turns it into an inner world, possibly the biggest component of oneself, but, unlike the real homeland, impossible to share - other than, perhaps, through music, or the paintings of Fernando Montes.

The piece will also be my personal tribute to a very dear friend, and an embrace of support to his widow Marcela, his daughter Sarita and his son Juan Enrique (also an excellent artist), old allies in friendship and cultural adventures.