VISITS
The music of the House of Alba: Reflections of the Eighteenth Century commemorates the lost heritage of the Casa de Alba musical archive.
The Casa de Alba Foundation and the Guerrero Foundation are organizing an extraordinary concert dedicated to commemorating the musical heritage lost after the fire of Liria Palace in 1936, and whose funds are known thanks to the publication of La Música en la Casa de Alba, research carried out by the musicologist José Subirá at the behest of the 12th Duke of Alba, Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart and Falcó. The music of the Casa de Alba: Reflections of the Eighteenth Century will be held in the music room of the Liria Palace, a space that is usually closed to public visits and that preserves its original condition. Tickets are on sale at www.palaciodeliria.com and at the box office of Liria Palace, with the possibility of attending the concert exclusively or purchasing a combined ticket including the concert and a guided tour of the palace.
The concert program includes the interpretation of works by the violinist José Herrando (Valencia, around 1720-Madrid, 1763) from a dual interpretative perspective: based on historically informed criteria in the case of two sonatas currently preserved in a handwritten copy of Subirà himself; and with modern instruments applied to fragments of other sonatas by Herrando himself that the musicologist and pianist Joaquín Nin published in 1930. All the works are intertwined with fragments of zarzuela from that time, arranged for this occasion, and in which the courtly atmosphere of the 18th century is recreated. It starts, therefore, in a baroque context to explore the vision that existed in the first decades of the 20th century about the music of that century, through a change of instruments and style.
The concert also serves as a musical illustration to the exhibition La Moda en la Casa de Alba, curated by Lorenzo Caprile and Eloy Martínez de la Pera, and opened there Liria Palace from October 19 to March 31. The dialogue between painting and fashion, seen from a literal perspective but also as a reinterpretation, is a historical constant that, as such, constitutes the final object of both activities. The music emerges from support for family portraits and dresses, testimonies of taste, style and the evolution of fashion, contextualizing their visuality and providing what has so often been perceived as an equivalent expression of the same beauty. In the artistic context of his own Liria Palace, containing one of the country's leading art collections, will make it possible to observe and listen in a single act.
The Casa de Alba Foundation, chaired by the Duke of Alba, Carlos Fitz-James Stuart and Martínez de Irujo, dedicates great efforts to the dissemination and opening of the Casa de Alba collection together with its palaces and residences, offering the opportunity to enjoy and learn about its legacy. The Duke of Alba defends a policy of closeness between Casa de Alba and the citizens of Madrid, of Spain and of any visitor motivated by cultural concerns. This concert confirms the relationship that Casa de Alba has maintained over five hundred years with important musicians from Juan del Encina to Cristóbal Halffter.
The Guerrero Foundation is the only private institution that assumes the promotion of Spanish musical theater, in particular the repertoire that relates to zarzuela and other related genres. It organizes exhibitions, concerts, musical and literary publications, and any other activity that helps the study and dissemination of that repertoire. It houses the Guerrero Archive, which preserves the personal and artistic heritage of Jacinto Guerrero (1895-1951), whose personal interests went beyond the entertainment world, in which he became an internationally successful author, which led him to promote the construction of the Coliseum building and theater on Madrid's Gran Vía, to hold positions as councilor of the Madrid City Council and president of the SGAE.
Jose Herrando - Joaquin Nin La Gallarda
Francisco Alonso The buggy. Gavota
Federico Moreno Torroba The Caramba.
Duchess Cayetana
Herrando - Nin Minué
José Herrando Sonata IV
Herrando - Nin The Affectionate
Jacinto Guerrero The Pompadour shirt. Farruca and Guajira
Herrando - Nin The Gallant and Pastoral
Pablo Sorozábal The Swindlers. Prelude 3
José Herrando Sonata V
Manuel Penella Don Gil de Alcalá. Pavana
Herrando - Nin La Alegre
Alonso The Zapaterita. Fandango
Since its founding in 2015 by violinist Daniel Pinteño, Concerto 1700 has contributed to the recovery and dissemination of the Hispanic musical heritage of the 17th and 18th centuries through the musicological study of historical interpretive practice and the use of period instruments. Concerto 1700 is a group with a variable formation that ranges from the trio to the baroque orchestra, allowing it to approach different repertoires.
Over the years, it has managed to position itself as one of the most important formations in the Spanish historicist field, performing in the Baroque Universe cycle of the National Center for Musical Dissemination (CNDM) at the National Auditorium of Spain, the San Sebastian Musical Fortnight, the Soriano Autumn Musical, the Juan March Foundation and the festivals of Granada, Santander International, Spanish Music of Cádiz, of Early Music of Aranjuez and Úbeda and Baeza.
In 2018, he created his own record label, 1700 Classics, dedicated to recording unreleased works from the 18th century in Spain. Among the awards received are Exceptional Scherzo Disc, Recommended Rhythm Record, Le Disque Classique du Jour de France Musique and nominations for the ICMA Awards.
Concerto 1700 was the resident group of the CNDM in the 2022 season, performing in various Spanish locations and in St. John's Smith Square as part of the London Festival of Baroque Music program. It has also been a resident group of the Fernando de Castro Foundation in Madrid since last season.
The bombing of the Liria Palace, as soon as the Spanish civil war began, caused irreparable damage to its archive and devastated the musical documentation that was preserved in it. Five hundred years of music, since Juan del Encina entered the service of the second Duke of Alba, Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo and Enríquez, disappeared after the flames and the subsequent storm that flooded Madrid on November 17, 1936. The musical memory collected in manuscripts and scores that were unique pieces becomes especially painful when reading La Música en la Casa de Alba, an exhaustive work of documentation published by José Subirà in 1927 at the behest of the 12th Duke of Alba and in which a record of everything that had been kept there remained.
This is the starting point of a concert in which diverse music merges, including a tribute to Subirà and his patron, Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart and Falcó, whose foresight allowed the musicologist to inventory and discover such important scores as the opera by Pedro Calderón de la Barca and Juan Hidalgo Celos, still from the air, matan, one of the first composed in Spain. Also included in the Subirá catalog are the sonatas for violin and bass by José Herrando collected in the manuscript Doce Tocatas a Solo for Violin and Bass for the Ex [elentísi] mo [Señor] r Duque de Huéscar. Fortunately, the loss of this document was only partial, since Subirá made a hand copy of the first eight, which is now kept in the Library of Catalonia in Barcelona, and which has been modernly edited by Raúl Angulo Díaz (Ars Hispana, Madrid, 2021). Two of them are included in the concert program.
Continuing the story, we arrive at the moment when Subirà handed Joaquín Nin the documentation about Herrando that he had collected in Liria, which allowed the composer, pianist and musicologist to publish José Herrando's Dix pièces. Pièces réasisées et publiées pour la première fois par Joaquín Nin in his Classiques espagnols du violon (Editions Max Eschig, Paris, 1930), with bows and digitization by Jeanne Bachelu, a violinist with whom he promoted the repertoire at numerous concerts in Spain and Europe. The ten edited movements come from eight sonatas and Nin reworked them, giving them particularly whimsical titles (La Alegre, Pastoral, La Galante, La Affectuosa, La Gallarda...), writing the piano accompaniment, adding new interpretative indications and introducing changes in order to adapt the music to the taste of his own time. Faced with the new principles then advocated by harpsichordist Wanda Landowska in favor of interpretation with era criteria, Nin defended pianistic musical adaptation trying to recover, from a contemporary perspective, the ideal imagined by the composer.
The meeting of both aesthetic positions generated very bitter debates, particularly between these two performers, and they now shape, although in a more peaceful and conciliatory way, an essential part of this concert in which José Herrando's two sonatas interpreted with historically informed criteria (with violin, cello and harpsichord) are incorporated into adaptations of Nin using modern instruments (violin, cello and piano). And all this is contextualized with music typical of the 1920s based on instrumental versions of zarzuelas fragments born from that same idealized recreational environment of the past that inspired Subirá and Nin, and which evoke the palatial atmosphere of the 18th century. Hence the gulls, fandangos, pavanas and farrucas from La Calesera and La Zapaterita by Francisco Alonso, La Caramba by Moreno Torroba, La Camisa de la Pompadour by Jacinto Guerrero, Don Gil de Alcalá by Manuel Penella and Los Burladores by Pablo Sorozábal that play in current instrumental arrangements by Jorge Magaz and Pablo Suárez and which, as such, are offered as a premiere. “Zarzuela,” Subirá wrote, “is (whether you like it or not) the only manifestation with its own personality, living essence and effective persistence, despite other highly esteemed products that our country can present.”
On the occasion of the concert, an extensive hand-held program will be published with texts by specialists Mª Luz González Peña, María Cáceres-Piñuel and Judith Ortega Rodríguez dedicated to zarzuela in the 1920s, the relationship between José Subirà and Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart and Falcó, and the music of José Herrando and its importance in the noble sphere of the 18th century.
Crafted by DIGITAL ATOM