Classical musicians rule Aliw Awards

Music writer Pablo A. Tariman had to quietly and reluctantly slip out of Pascal Roge's Monday night concert to receive in pianist Cecile Licad's behalf the latest accolade given her by the music industry. Below is the Tariman report.
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Filipino classical musicians with solid world-class credentials topped the 23rd Aliw Awards on a stormy Monday night at the Manila Hotel.

Leading the distinguished awardees were pianist Cecile Licad who got the Life Achievement Award, tenor Arthur Espiritu who received the Best Male Classical Performer of the Year Award and soprano Camille Lopez Molina for Best Female classical performer award.

Licad is the first Asian to receive the Leventritt Gold Medal in New York and Espiritu is the first Filipino tenor to sing at La Scala di Milan in 2007 as Ferrando in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. Lopez-Molina who was a dazzling soloist of the Manila Symphony Orchestra this year has performed with the Hongkong Academy Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien Orchestra, the latter in a performance of Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater at the famed Wiener Musikverein, home of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

The tenor could not receive the award as he was singing Elvino in the Donizetti opera in Switzerland while Licad had engagements with Nuremberg Symphony in Germany.

Previous Aliw awardees in classical music included Ingrid Sala Santamaria, Gilopez Kabayo, Rachelle Gerodias, Mary Anne Espina and Montet Acoymo, among others.

In a latest development, Licad dazzled anew in playing Chopin No. 1 played for the opening season of the Adrian Symphony Orchestra in Michigan .

Licad who proceeded to Germany after the US engagement was singled out by the music critics as one who set the highest standard of music-making for the opening season of the Michigan orchestra.

Wrote a Michigan critic: "It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Adrian Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of the first classical-music performance of its 30th season set the bar mighty high for the rest of its year. Sunday’s concert featured a performance that was most definitely a high point of this or any other ASO season: a truly world-class guest artist, Cecile Licad, in a stunning rendering of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Not often do you have the distinct pleasure of hearing someone for whom the instrument seems like a natural extension of themselves, but for Licad it appears exactly that way. She not only displayed a first-rate technique, with the light touch and refinement demanded of this work, but she also captured perfectly what surely had to be Chopin’s intentions with this music: for its understated grace and very intimate quality to shine through for the listener."

The same critic admitted it was a dazzling performance by any measure, and no less so for the orchestra under music director John Thomas Dodson’s baton, which certainly met the challenges Licad set up for it. "

He added: "And just in case you thought a piano work couldn’t get any better-played than the Chopin was, the Gottschalk piece she presented as an encore was, in a word, spectacular."

Licad performing with the Adrian Symphony Orchestra in Michigan