Organ vs Orchestra

As part of its organ concert cycle and in collaboration with the San Miguel Arcángel Royal Canarian Academy of Fine Arts (RACBA), the Auditorio de Tenerife offers a matinee with  A2 Dúo, a group formed by both organist Ana Belén García and Ana Aguado, who will play the exceptional organ of the auditorium as a great symphonic orchestra.

Unlike his religious works, Johann Sebastian Bach intended his four Orchestral Suites for the haute bourgeoisie of Leipzig. From the fourth (BWV 1069), formed by 5 movements with a marked French character, a striking Overture, an elegant Minuet and an agile and resolute Réjouissance, will be performed. It is worth highlighting that the transcription chosen for this occasion was produced by the composer, organist and pianist Max Reger, whose 150th birth anniversary is being celebrated.

The work following it is one of the most well-known from the original repertoire for two organists: The Sonata no.1 by the German organist and composer Gustav Adolf Merkel. This splendid and solid composition exudes influences of some of the great names of the era such as Josef Rheinberger and Felix Mendelssohn, and in the central Adagio, it is possible to find the lyricism that the latter composer used to display.

The Bacchanale, one of the most well-known pieces from the great opera Samson & Delilah by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, begins the last of the three acts that comprise this work based on the Biblical story of the warrior Samson and the beautiful Delilah. This sensual dance is characterised by the use of exuberant rhythms and winding and exotic melodic lines created using oriental scales, resources combined with the sole aim of recreating in the minds of listeners the shameless festival in honour of the god Bacchus held to mark the arrest of Samson by the Philistines using Delilah.

Alongside the ballet Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker is one of the most popular works by Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky. Before its premiere, the musician selected eight of its songs, thus creating the Nutcracker Suite op. 71a as a concert work premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1892 in Saint Petersburg and was conducted by the composer himself. There are three pieces from this collection which will be performed in this concerto, which simply had to include the very famous Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, featuring the peculiar timbre of the celesta. The two remaining numbers are March and the Waltz of the Flowers. The latter is an example of the high level of compositional sophistication to which Tchaikovsky subjected one of the nineteenth-century genres par excellence, which was the result of the extensive mastery he had of the orchestra and his unquestionable ties to ballet.

The series of marches that form the collection Pomp and Circumstance have become the second national anthem of Great Britain, being performed at the end of each season of the Proms which, year after year, are held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The collection owes its name to a phrase that can be read in Othelloby Shakespeare. We will hear the fourth march, which the composer himself described as “rhythmic and ceremonial”. The finishing touch to conclude a programme that encapsulates and impeccably combines seriousness, fun, difficulty and solemnity.

Rosario Álvarez, musicologist 

"Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,

The spirit-stirring drum, 

Th'ear-piercing fife,

The royal banner, and all quality,

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!"

                                                                 William Shakespeare