«LA JAULA DE ORO» | SILVIA MÁRQUEZ AND THE OSRM | By Carlos Escobar

Interview with Silvia Márquez on the La Verdad blog "Música inesperada", by Carlos Escobar, on the occasion of the harpsichordist's concerts with the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia.

The 1920s set the artistic pulse of the City of Light. After the First World War, painters, musicians, writers, artists and intellectuals gathered in Paris and, freed from moral constraints, gave free rein to their creativity. One of them was the composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), who at the age of twenty-eight met the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, who opened his mind to the harpsichord's possibilities of timbre, expression and contrast.

Photo: © Joaquín Clares

INTERVIEW

LA VERDAD | BLOG "MÚSICA INESPERADA" | 25/04/2021 | Carlos Escobar The 1920s set the artistic pulse of the City of Light. After the First World War, painters, musicians, writers, artists and intellectuals gathered in Paris and, freed from moral constraints, gave free rein to their creativity. One of them was the composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), who at the age of twenty-eight met the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, who opened his mind to the harpsichord's possibilities of timbre, expression and contrast.

The interest that the harpsichord works written in the 17th and 18th centuries awakened in Poulenc was consolidated on the staves of his Concierto campestre para clave y orquesta, an interesting neoclassical composition in which the atmosphere changes constantly and suddenly, as it usually does in the skies of the French capital.

One of the people who knows this Concierto campestre and the secrets of the harpsichord best is Silvia Márquez Chulilla, professor of the instrument at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid and a musician with strong artistic ties to our region, which she combines with complete ease with her busy international calendar as a teacher, soloist and director of early and contemporary music.

I take advantage of Silvia's many artistic facets to put a triple question to her and find out how she would sell Poulenc's Concierto campestre para clave y orquesta to a concert hall programmer, to an advanced student and to a person from Murcia who has bought a ticket for next Wednesday 28 April's programme.

To the person in charge of a concert hall's programming, Silvia would stress two aspects: “On the one hand, its peculiarity. This concerto is one of the few cases in which the harpsichord literally plays with a large symphony orchestra in a constant dialogue and dance between the two: one sings and the other answers, one dances and the other joins in, so that they seek each other out, chase each other and surprise each other endlessly. On the other hand, I would insist that it is a unique work in the harpsichord repertoire throughout the history of music which, starting from the Baroque, takes us into a dazzling, avant-garde sound world. This concerto is hardly ever programmed, and its unusual brilliance and colour transport us to the extraordinarily rich sociocultural life of Paris in the 1920s.”

To the student who is going to perform it as a final-year piece, our guest today would give advice on both the technical and the musical side: “Technically, it is a concerto that will demand hand positions and stretches that are not worked on in other repertoire, as well as absolute control of rhythm (the changes of time signature are constant and rapid) and of the articulation so exquisitely marked by Poulenc.” On the musical side, Silvia Márquez believes that in no other concerto will the student enjoy the interaction between harpsichord and orchestra as much, especially “if they manage to recognise the little nods from each orchestral instrument that imitate or continue the harpsichord's motifs, and vice versa. The cantabile, the rhythmic force of the most primitive moments and the variety of this music will demand clarity of ideas regarding the tempi and the ability to build a whole out of so many small fragments”.

And as for the subscribers: “Don't lose your ticket!”

Silvia considers that Poulenc's Concierto campestre para clave y orquesta, written in 1928, is the soundtrack of a Paris of creativity and tolerance: “Over twenty-five minutes it will make them feel such a wealth of moods and emotions that they won't believe it. They are unlikely to hear this kind of harpsichord music in front of an orchestra again, so those who don't know the concerto should let themselves be surprised and not expect to hear the music usually associated with this instrument.”

This harpsichord expert always compares this work with the music of Walt Disney's film Fantasía: “In it, mice, elephants, dinosaurs, fairies and flowers dance to the music of Stravinsky, Beethoven, Dukas, Tchaikovsky or Bach, influences that we can find in Poulenc. In fact, Walt Disney and Francis Poulenc were only two years apart in age, and I am sure that if the Concierto campestre had reached Walt Disney's hands, he would have included it in the soundtrack of one of his films”.

In these times of pandemic, I am sure you are curious about what a day in Madrid is like for a conservatoire professor. With a smile, Silvia likens the academic institution to a gilded cage: “In the classroom I am alone with the student, and when classes finish I quickly head home. These are not times for doing much more, such as organising orchestral gatherings and other in-person activities, which is a shame. But for me it is a gilded cage because this pandemic has not been able to defeat the talent and interest of the young harpsichord students who devote so much time and effort to advanced music studies. They all work so intensely that I keep learning, constantly asking myself questions in class and being amazed that no two people, two students or two musicians are alike. There are such different personalities! I suppose it is the best thing that can happen to music or to any artistic discipline”.

Silvia Marquez believes that Stravinski's Sinfonía nº 1, which completes next Wednesday's programme at the Auditorio Víctor Villegas, is the perfect match for Poulenc's Concierto campestre. What I can guarantee is that this fantastic harpsichordist and Virginia Martínez, artistic director of the OSRM, combine enough talent, dedication and rapport for us all to dance happily, just as the Parisian composer once pictured it as he sat at his worktable.

LINKS

Carlos Escobar's blog, "Música inesperada", in La Verdad: https://blogs.laverdad.es/musicainesperada/2021/04/25/la-jaula-de-oro/