The Venezuelan Cuatro player Leo Rondón makes his debut at the Salzburg Pentecost Festival as part of the L’Arpeggiata ensemble, conducted by Cristina Pluhar, which will perform a program entitled Torre del Oro. The Salzburg Pentecost Festival has Seville as the central theme of its programming for 2022, which is celebrated between June 3 and 6. A new production of Il barbiere di Siviglia with stage direction by Rolando Villazón will open the festival with its director, Cecilia Bartoli, playing the role of Rosina, with whom she made her professional debut at the end of the 1980s. The concert in which the Cuatro player Leo Rondón participates will take place on Saturday, July 4 at the Haus für Mozart in the Austrian city.
About this program in which the cuatrista Leo Rondón participates, the festival says: On the banks of the Guadalquivir is the symbol of Seville, the twelve-sided Torre del Oro. For many centuries, the port in front of the Torre del Oro was the departure point for Spanish galleons sailing to South America and returning to Seville laden with treasure. But it also symbolizes the lively and enriching exchange between peoples and cultures. In this concert, L’Arpeggiata opens the golden door from the Old to the New World. The starting point of the musical journey is the music of Alonso Mudarra. The Sevillian composer (1508-1580) is one of the most important Spanish vihuelists of the 16th century, whose innovations in instrumental and vocal music were so significant that his work is still recognized today. Mudarra’s works were published in the collection Tres libros de música en cifra para vihuela de Sevilla in 1546. It contains variations of folías, tientos, pavanas, gallardas, romanescas, canzones, villancicos and sonnets in Latin, Spanish and Italian, which can be found among the oldest solo songs with instrumental accompaniment. From this collection the musical path leads to South America and the “living baroque” in the traditional musical culture there to this day. The Venezuelan cuatro, a key instrument in the Caribbean country’s folklore, is a direct descendant of the vihuela, and popular and traditional Venezuelan music is truffled with the aroma of both courtly and popular Spanish music, and its most characteristic forms, such as the joropo, descends directly from the fandango.
Cover of Cantos y Revueltas, with Flores, Rondón, the Real Filharmonía and Hernández-Silva
Cuatrista, guitarist, double bassist, composer-arranger and producer, Leo Rondón is one of the most outstanding representatives of his instrument who has performed in concert halls and festivals in Venezuela, Colombia, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, Kazakhstan and Morocco, with different groups and in collaborations with artists such as Quatuor Debussy, Rolando Villazón, Emiliano González Toro, Richard Galliano, Didier Lockwood, Cristóbal Soto, Ricardo Sandoval, Alexis Cárdenas, Simón Bolívar Big Band of Jazz, Omar Acosta and Roberto Koch, Pacho Flores or Manuel Hernández-Silva, among others. As a soloist, he has appeared alongside Alexis Cárdenas and Recoveco in the show El Fuego Latino organized by the Orchester National d’Île-de-France and under the baton of maestro Alondra de la Parra, presenting seven concerts in the Parisian region, where they stand out the Philharmonie de Paris or the Opera Garnier. In Spain, he has performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Galicia, the Malaga Philharmonic Orchestra, the Navarra Symphony, the Murcia Region Symphony, the Extremadura Orchestra, the Valencia Orchestra and the Gran Canaria Philharmonic Orchestra, and among his next commitments are the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Arctic Philharmonic or Swedish Chamber Orchestra. He has participated in the album CANTOS Y REVUELTAS, by Pacho Flores, for Deutsche Grammophon, with the Real Filarmonía de Galicia and Hernández-Silva and has recently premiered his CONCIERTO DEL MAR for four Venezuelans and orchestra with the Murcia Region Symphony under the baton of Pacho Flores.
He won third place in the 2007 Siembra del Cuatro, and second place in 2012, as well as in 2011 as a cuatro player at the El Silbón (Venezuela) and San Martín (Colombia) festivals. He is currently a cuatrista, arranger and producer of the Ávila Quartet, a Venezuelan music quartet, as well as a cuatrista with the Ensemble L’Arpeggiata, directed by Christina Pluhar, Alexis Cárdenas y Recoveco, Venezuelan Roots and Joropo Jam, in addition to his solo project Leo Rondon Project. He organizes since 2010, together with the teacher Cristóbal Soto, the Summer Course Música Criolla Venezolana, a Venezuelan music teaching camp in the city of Mirecourt, France. Leo Rondón uses a cuatro made by Mathias Caron.
Manuel Hernández-Silva and Pacho Flores appear with the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine to offer two French premieres, those of the trumpet concertos, Salseando, by Roberto Sierra, and Concerto Venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera. In addition, a purely Latin American program is completed with Redes, by Silvestre Revueltas, and Estancia, by Ginastera. This French premiere of Salseando is the fourth in the cycle of premieres derived from the joint commission between the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Murcia Region Symphony Orchestra, the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra and the Bordeaux-Aquitaine National Orchestra itself. Hernández-Silva, who was also responsible for its Spanish premiere in Murcia, will conduct it next season with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra for its premiere in North America, later it will be Anu Tali with the Orchester Symphonique de Quebec who will premiere it in Canada, and Domingo Hindoyan will conduct it again in Liverpool for a new recording.
In the other hand, the Concerto Venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera completed its series of premieres by the co-commissioning orchestras last February by the San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare, after the Minería Symphony, again the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Valencia Orchestra, a Spanish premiere also under Hernández-Silva’s conducting. Since then it has already been scheduled with the Castilla y León Symphony and Carlos Miguel Prieto and the Gran Canaria Philharmonic with Hernández-Silva, Payare will take it this summer with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and next season, again under the baton of Hernández-Silva, will be presented together with the Galician Symphony. Hernández-Silva’s presence in this commissioned project will continue with the premieres of the new concert commissioned from Gabriela Ortiz with the Galician Symphony and Daniel Freiberg’s Historias de Flores y Tangos with the Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, both at the season 2022/23, and at the time he also conducted the Spanish premiere of Danzas Latinas by Efraín Oscher with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, with which he also premiered and recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Cantos y Revueltas by Pacho Flores himself.
Cover of Cantos y Revueltas, with Flores, Rondón, the Rea Filharmonía and Hernández-Silva
All these new trumpet concerts are the result of a carefully laid plan with the aim of expanding the scarce repertoire for solo trumpet and orchestra, which is materializing through a project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts from outstanding composers such as all those mentioned here. In a first phase, Arturo Márquez, Paquito D’Rivera and Roberto Sierra were commissioned, in a second Christian Lindberg, Efraín Oscher and Daniel Freiberg, and with Gabriela Ortiz a third phase begins and will last for the next seasons. The first of all the premieres was Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño, by the National Symphony of Mexico and Carlos Miguel Prieto, and despite the interruptions and delays caused by the COVID19 pandemic, with this one from Bordeaux, sixteen of the twenty-one planned premieres of the first two phases have already been made, and if nothing prevents it, at the beginning of the 2023/24 season the twenty-five premieres corresponding to the seven commissions will have been completed.
Pacho Flores, Leo Rondón and Manuel Hernández-Silva meet again, this time together with the Gran Canaria Philmarmonic Orchestra, to offer a program that includes Kalinnikov’s Symphony No. 1 and two trumpet concerts: the Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’ Rivera, and Cantos y Revueltas, by Pacho himself. The concert will take place at the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas on Saturday, May 6 at 8:00 p.m. These two trumpet concerts have several things in common, such as the fact that they were composed for a wide range of instruments of the trumpet family that include trumpets, cornets and flugelhorns, all with four pistons and manufactured by STOMVI: cornet in C, trumpet in C, cornet in G, flugelhorn in B flat and cornet in F for the Concerto Venezolano, and flugelhorn in B flat, cornet in D and trumpet in C for Cantos y Revueltas, which means that Pacho comes on stage with 6 different instruments.
Another thing both works have in common is the presence of the Venezuelan cuatro; in the case of D’Rivera, integrated as part of the orchestra, and in the case of Flores, as co-soloist with the trumpet —not in in vain this piece bears the subtitle Fantasia concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings. Rondón is one of the most outstanding virtuosi of this instrument and has collaborated with ensembles such as the Quatuor Debussy, L’Arpeggiata by Christina Pluhar or the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón, as well as with orchestras such as the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre National de l’Ile de France, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Valencia Orchestra, Castilla y León Symphony Orchestra, Extremadura Symphony Orchestra, Navarre Symphony Orchestra, Tunisia Symphony Orchestra or Malaga Philharmonic, and he will soon debut with the Gran Canaria Philharmonic. Future engagements will take him to Sweden and Norway.
The Concerto Venezolano is a joint commission between the Minería Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Valencia Orchestra and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, which have premiered it under the baton of conductors Carlos Miguel Prieto, Domingo Hindoyan, Manuel Hernández-Silva and Rafael Payare, respectively. Cantos y Revueltas was premiered by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia and Manuel Hernández-Silva, and is the main work on the homonymous album by Deutsche Grammophon.
The absolute premiere of Albares, Pacho Flores’ concert for flugelhorn, will take place next Friday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m. at the Adán Martín Auditorium in Tenerife, performed by Pacho himself with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra (OST) under the baton of Christian Vásquez. A second trumpet concert, Danzas Latinas by Efraín Oscher, commissioned and premiered by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia in November 2021 under Manuel Hernández-Silva, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 will complete the program. This flugelhorn concert is the second work composed by Pacho Flores for solo instrument and orchestra after Cantos y Revueltas, fantasia concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings, which was also premiered by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia and Manuel Hernández-Silva in January 2018, featuring Leo Rondón on the Venezuelan cuatro, and which is part of the homonymous album for Deutsche Grammophon, Pacho’s fourth recording for the yellow label.
The instrument construction technique has always been vital for the development of music; not in vain instruments are the tools whose evolution and improvement have allowed composers to go a step further, demanding from the performers increasingly greater skills in order to exploit the potential of their new works, a classic virtuous circle. The appearance of pistons expanded the possibilities of brass instruments and therefore their importance within the orchestra, as well as their role as solo instruments, as was the case with Haydn’s Trumpet Concert, commissioned by Weidinger for a new instrument with valves that allowed him to play the chromatic scale, soon improved by the incorporation of the three pistons. Nowadays, Pacho Flores is promoting both an expansion of the solo trumpet repertoire as well as an unprecedented technological evolution of the instrument. Both lines do not run in parallel but intermingle and feed each other back continually, allowing their mutual development.
The expansion of the repertoire comes about through an ambitious project of shared commissions to leading composers, who write trumpet concerts for the new four-piston prototypes in new keys developed by STOMVI. Pacho works closely with the engineers in the development of these instruments, whose timbre and register possibilities are made known in advance to the composers, so that they know what they can expect from them. The fact that Pacho uses different trumpets in the same concert means that the expressive possibilities of timbre, color and range of these pieces are multiplied. In Albares, Pacho has given this process a new twist by requiring STOMVI to manufacture three new instruments to meet the demands of the work. For the first movement, Bambuco, a C flugelhorn has been constructed, for the second, Milonga, a low A flugelhorn, and for the third, Periquera, a high D flugelhorn.
Pacho Flores conducts the absolute premiere of Leo Rondón’s Concierto del mar for Venezuelan cuatro and orchestra, with the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, on Sunday, April 24. This is probably the first or one of the first concerts for Venezuelan cuatro and orchestra ever written. The cuatro, a descendent of the guitar, smaller in size and with four strings (hence its name, cuatro), is an instrument of Venezuelan and Colombian popular music, although there are some differences between one and the other. In recent years and thanks to a brilliant generation of performers, among whom Leo Rondón stands out, this instrument has been gaining presence in the orchestral music scene. Pacho Flores himself gave it an important presence in his work Cantos y Revueltas, fantasia concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings, in which Rondón was in charge of the cuatro solo part, and which both recorded together for Deutsche Grammophon with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia under Manuel Hernández-Silva.
Leo Rondón has a long history of collaborations and has worked with ensembles such as Quatuor Debussy, Christina Pluhar’s L’Arpeggiata or the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón, as well as with orchestras such as the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre National de l’Ile de France, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Valencia Orchestra, Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Extremadura Symphony Orchestra, Navarre Symphony Orchestra, Tunisia Symphony Orchestra or the Malaga Philharmonic, and he will soon make his debut with the Gran Canaria Philharmonic, with future commitments in Sweden and Norway. Naturally, he also keeps one foot in traditional music, collaborating with the Alexis Cárdenas quartet and other ensembles. Concierto del mar is his first symphonic work.
Pacho, for his part, has already some experience as a conductor and he is increasingly delving deeper into this facet. He has conducted the International Trumpet Guild Festival Orchestra in San Antonio, Texas; the Kammerensemble Konsonanz of Bremen in the recording of trumpeter Fabio Brum’s album EGREGORE for Naxos, in which he also acts as musical producer; or the Brass Ensemble of the Bogotá Philharmonic. Pacho is also an active composer. In addition to the aforementioned Cantos y Revueltas, other compositions include Musas y Resuello, for brass ensemble and percussion and premiered in Bogotá; Heterónimos, for trumpet and small orchestra, included in the album by Fabio Brum and which, together with Preludio y Fuga for strings, will have its absolute premiere at this concert in Murcia; or Albares, the new concerto for flugelhorn that will be premiered next April with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra under Christian Vásquez, in addition to other works recorded on his album ENTROPÍA such as Morocota,Labios vermelhos, etc.
