Edmon Colomer returns to the island at an event where the Catalan pianist Albert Guinovart will be the guest soloist

 

Sinfónica de Tenerife (Tenerife Symphony Orchestra) is a project of the Island Council’s Department of Culture that is managed by Enrique Arriaga. This Friday (the 11th) at 7:30 p.m., it is giving a concert, conducted by Edmon Colomer, where it will perform Symphony No.2 The Age of Anxiety by Bernstein, Passacaglia, by Webern, and Le mer, by Claude Debussy. In the first of these pieces, the soloist role will be performed by the pianist Albert Guinovart.

The Age of Anxiety by Leonard Bernstein (Lawrence, 1918 – New York, 1990) was premièred in 1949 and revised during the sixties by the composer himself. Work written based on the poem of the same name by the 1948 winner of the Pulitzer Prize, W.H. Auden, “one of the most devastating examples in the history of English poetry”, according to Bernstein who, fascinated from the time of his first reading, delved into “almost compulsive” composing. As if a musical and autobiographical reflection of the bar depicted in the Nightwhawkers painting by Hopper, the work speaks, according to the musician himself, of the quest for his own identity and his values in a world of spiritual emptiness and lacking purpose.

The second part of the concert begins with a work by Anton Webern (Vienna, 1883 – Mittersill, 1945). We will listen to his first work: Passacaglia, an original Spanish form with variations characteristic of the Baroque, on basso ostinato. The piece is the result of the lessons of Schoenberg as the direct teacher of Webern, who displayed a special interest, from the outset, in counterpoint. A late romantic work that, at times, is reminiscent of Symphony No. 4 by Brahms.

The programme is completed with La Mer, by Claude Debussy (Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1862 – Paris, 1918), a suggestive impressionist work that the French composer began working on using his childhood memories on the beach. Memories that are nothing other than imagined experience, and that become a powerful evocative tool in the hands of Debussy. 

Edmon Colomer (Barcelona, 1951) is returning to the island to conduct an orchestra that he was the lead conductor of during the 1985-1986 season. Colomer was the founder of the Cadaqués Orchestra and, in addition to the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra, he has served as the led conductor of the Balearic Islands Symphony Orchestra, the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Malaga, the Orchestre de Picardie in France and the Daejeon Philharmonic in South Korea.

The pianist Albert Guinovart (Barcelona, 1962), who is making his debut in the season of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra, first trained in Barcelona and then in London with the Italian pianist María Curcio. Guinovart has been a guest of many highly renowned orchestras such as Sydney Festival Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchester-Kölner Philarmoniker, Orchestre Nationale de Montpellier, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Toulouse, The State Academy Orchestra Saint Petersburgh, Israel Chamber Orchestra, Franz Liszt of Budapest, Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona and Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid. Likewise, he has performed with great singers like Juan Diego Flórez, Victoria de los Ángeles, Barbara Hendricks and Frederica von Stade.

Tickets can be purchased until one hour before the show on the website www.auditoriodetenerife.com, at the box office and by dialling the phone number 902 317 327 from Monday to Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. The audience is requested to arrive at the venue well in advance to enter the Auditorium in staggered "waves". By purchasing tickets, you accept the measures implemented by the cultural centre to combat COVID-19. All of the measures, as well as the contingency plan certified by AENOR, can be consulted on the Auditorium’s website.