Spanish Symphonic Music

"My roots, my origin, my language, the ancestor’s land... that perfume of the Spanish, its millenary culture, its rhythm, its color, its light, its air, its life, transformed into musical notes, into melodies, into harmonies... "

A proposal available to everyone

I firmly believe that in my work as a Spanish Orchestra Conductor, other than knowing the international repertoire, I have the obligation to be a standard bearer in the dissemination and recognition that deserves that giant work of many Spanish composers of the 19 century and first third of the 20 century, making that inspiration and good artistic work known in all concert halls and programming.
A serious “directorial” vision, a musical concept with all the guarantees of technical value and results, able to equialize other European musics, a deep study and work on all those works, are the basic pillars that support my work.

From Modern to Modernism

Romanticism, Nationalism, Post Romanticism or Impressionism were some of the new aesthetics that inescapably marked the lines of artistic creation and of cultural and even social life throughout Europe.
The great names in the History of Music of the 19 th and 20th century, composed wonderful and unrepeatable works, recognized and indisputable. But also, and it is an incontestable fact, they wrote a lot of other music not considered within the "top" of instrumental and / or vocal music that we could call second or third class, in relation to their great works.
And it is there, in comparison with those “other works” by a Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Bizet, Tchaikovsky or so many others, where the Spanish symphonic works, that of the composers here, who fought against thick and thin to diffusion, recognition, styling or simply understanding and audience, they are at the same level or above those.

The Spain of the 19th century was moving very slowly from the “modern of the time” to that “aesthetic-cultural modernism”. Immersed in a multitude of social changes, always limping, it was lagging behind in everything that refers to the diffusion of culture and the new European aesthetics (except at the court, Frenchified or Italianized, coming from the opera world). Our own internal tensions, generated a social environment not favorable to this expansion of culture.
But what happened, surrounded by all these new and exciting "isms"? Was everything really like that? Is it possible that it was all a cultural wasteland, with little oases in the big cities?
There were many great personalities in the world of the arts who, despite the difficulties, continued to work and let themselves be impregnated by all these new aesthetic trends, which, although slowly, were gentley reaching the Peninsula. Many of these artists, at the first opportunity that was presented to them, went to know first-hand, those cities and countries, where Culture was constantly boiling and evolving.
And they returned to Spain with it under their arms, so as not to lose their essence, their Spanish aroma, to work "at home", being inspired by things from their familiar environment, and at the same time, transmit and show all those new aesthetics, creating a new cultural thought.
At the end of the Musical 18 th century in Spain, when the 1st Vienna School was summarizing the compositional and instrumental process in Europe, here we got stuck in the symphonic concept more Gallant than Classical. The only thing that stands out was J. C. Arriaga, “the Spanish Mozart”, as a composer with a certain modern level of the moment. The increasing very gradual increase of German Romanticism, together with the departure of composers to Europe, caused that, with some 50-60 years of delay, these romantic aesthetics appeared in the first examples of symphonic and concert-symphonic music.
We must not forget, however, the amalgam of Spanish elements that define the "why" of everything, the importance of three fundamental axles in the musical Spain of the time: the music of the Church, the deeply rooted popular music, translated and "coming out" later with the “Zarzuela and Genero Chico” and the first educational centers jointly structured with the first large theaters.
All this group of "Europeanized" composers and instrumentalists are the ones who brought us the technical and musical innovations that would mark the 2nd half of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century in Spain. And it was during this stage where the so-called "Musical Nationalism" made an appearance, reaching its highest levels with the Falla, Albéniz, Granados, etc ...
However, where were all the other composers? Where are their works? Why don't they appear in music seasons?
To the large number of forgotten and overlooked Spanish composers, as soon as a deeper technical analysis of their compositions is made, we can appreciate the excellent quality of their works, so much so that they are taken seriously in view of the possibility of recovering and putting those symphonic and concert musics than on the stands of more than undoubted musical category.

“Listen to Spain, its fields and its people, instinctively refers to how much we were; it is a way of listening to the ancestors, the way of having them as equals, the means of returning them"

To break musical taboos, to generate new listeners who enjoy discovering our rich Spanish musical heritage for orchestra, to change some habits of “listening to the usual” in the seasons, perhaps it need impulses like this. And there is that very high and aesthetic and musical quality repertoire for orchestra, that, as a director, I want to know and enjoy the universal music-loving public.

Are we going to continue keeping all this rich Spanish cultural heritage in oblivion? It is in our hands!

Joaquín de la Cuesta
Orchestra Conductor