Organ and percussion: a world to discover

As part of its organ concert cycle, the Tenerife Auditorium is offering, in collaboration with the San Miguel Arcángel Royal Canarian Academy of Fine Arts (RACBA), a matinee with Joan Castelló on percussion and Daniel Oyarzabal at the keys of the great instrument housed in the walls of Symphony Hall.

Organ and percussion: a world to discover.

An attractive look at the most famous music of the last century and a half

The trend taken up by organists in recent times aiming to enrich organ concerts in auditoriums with other instruments that have contrasting timbres which add variety to the repertoire of predominantly Romantic symphonic pieces in which they assume the role of an entire orchestra is a way of offering a new vision of those well known scores for an audience who will be amazed and delighted by the transmutation of that musical world -- a world which, until now, seemed immutable. And although it may be true that the multiple timbres of the organ can represent those of an orchestra, especially those of the wind instruments, that is not exactly the case with the varied and rich percussion section, which provides –in addition to diverse and suggestive new colours and techniques– the rhythmic drive, the crystalline or opaque sound of metal and wood keys being struck, as well as the depth of drum heads, among many other examples. The world of organ and percussion is, for us, a world to discover which –through seven piece by composers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that have been transcribed by the organist Oyarzabal– will keep us in constant tension, bathing our senses with new sensations. A world which will provide us with pure enjoyment, full of energy and vitality. In short, it will electrify us.

Dr. Rosario Álvarez, musicologist and president of RACBA.