 | This montage from our Podcast Vault revisits a post from January 3, 2020. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast330 |
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Our first foray into the Podcast Vault for the New
Year is barely a year old, as we originally posted this as the first Friday
post for 2020. Hard for me to propose a fresh take here, but here are some
interesting tidbits taken from the composer’s official
website
At the beginning of the 1920s Joaquín Rodrigo was already an
excellent pianist and composition student familiar with the most important
contemporary trends in the arts. His first compositions were written in small
musical forms, and his first work for large orchestra, Juglares, was
successfully premiered by the Valencia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique
Izquierdo in 1924. Rodrigo decided to move to France in 1927, since the French
capital had been from the beginning of the century an important cultural centre
for Spanish writers, painters and musicians. It was to be expected, therefore,
that the young Joaquín Rodrigo would want to follow in the footsteps of
Albéniz, Falla and Turina. By the end of the decade Joaquín was studying with
his French master Paul Dukas in the École Normale de Musique in Paris.
In the spring of 1938 Joaquín Rodrigo and his wife had moved
to Germany and was invited to teach on the summer courses at the University of
Santander, which had just opened. The Rodrigos were thus able to renew their
contacts with Spanish cultural life, in spite of the difficulties caused by the
Civil War. A very significant encounter took place on the return journey to
Paris, when during a lunch with the guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza and the
Marqués de Bolarque Joaquín enthusiastically agreed to the idea of writing a
concerto for guitar. This work would be the Concierto de Aranjuez. During their
last year of residence in the French capital Rodrigo gave piano recitals,
undertook various orchestrations which were commissioned from him, and composed
a number of songs in light-music style. But when winter arrived the Rodrigos
began to consider a permanent return to Spain, once the country was finally at
peace. Joaquín and Victoria finally returned to Spain on the 1st September
1939, two days before the outbreak of the Second World War, carrying with them
in a suitcase the manuscript of the Concierto de Aranjuez.
During all these years the composer received many honours
both in Spain and from abroad in recognition of his work. He was named Officier
des Arts et des Lettres in 1960 and member of the Légion d'honneur in 1963 by
the French government, Doctor of Music honoris causa by the University of
Salamanca in 1964, and in 1966 he received the Gran Cruz del Mérito Civil and
the Medalla de Oro al Mérito en el Trabajo. In 1963 he travelled to Puerto Rico
to teach a course in the History of Music at the University of Río Piedras,
where he remained until February 1964.
Our filler piece is one of five works Rodrigo composed for
guitar and orchestra, his Concierto para una fiesta from 1982, premiered the
following year at the Ridglea Country Club, Fort Worth, Texas (USA) by Pepe
Romero and the Texas Little Symphony. Romero is featured here with The Academy
of St-Martin-in-the-Fields with Sir Neville Marriner.
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