Flores para Placido Domingo

Yes, it is the Maestro's signature on a Metropolitan Opera playbill of The Enchanted Island, a Baroque pastiche where Señor Domingo plays Neptune. This was part of my Christmas loot of paper treasures from fellow music aficionado Lara Halili. I'm paying my personal homage to the esteemed tenor from Spain who turned 74 on Jan. 21. I hope retirement is far from his mind.

And there he is, holding Neptune's trident. How glorious he appears.

To you, whose beautiful name translates into English as Placid Sunday (shouldn't our Sundays be placid, always?), this Pinay fan offers a vase of white lilies from Benguet's fields. Thank you for years of listening pleasure. Photos by Babeth Lolarga

'Sunday Morning,' starring Butones

First sight to greet us just outside the pedestrian gate was Ms. Lovely Purple Photos by Booboo

"...[T]here are two big problems associated with taking pictures. Firstly, we’re likely to be so busy taking the pictures, we forget to look at the world whose beauty and interest prompted us to take a photograph in the first place. And secondly, because we feel the pictures are safely stored on our phones, we never get around to looking at them, so sure are we that we’ll get around to it one day." - "Why you should stop taking pictures on your phone - and learn to draw," from the blog www.theschooloflife.com, posted by The Philosophers' Mail on 12 May 2014.

It's one of those miraculous mornings after two consecutive gray days in Baguio. Our little bossing wasn't gonna let it pass without a walk around the village. She was still in her jammies with monkey prints with one monkey saying "I'm not tired." I was in my house dress with snowflake prints (thank you, Lara Halili!) so I a pulled a long pullover over it for decency's sake. I put on my dark glasses, and Butones returned to her room to fetch hers. I put on a made-in-Batanes hat, she put on her yellow polka-dot cap but decided at the last minute to toss it back in the living room as we prepared to leave.

The pictures that follow are the ones that Butones said I should take. She always prefaced her command with "Look!" And look I did: at flowers, spider webs, clumps of fallen pine needles, banks of clouds, etc. What is a mere pretender to the title of "photojournalist" to do but to follow the keener and more curious eyes of Da Bossing?

I'm posting and sharing our pics from a few hours ago. Taking pictures is faster than drawing. And like I wrote before, pictures help me remember, especially one child's precious observations.

The finger points to the direction we're about to take.

Whenever she encounters her shadow, she's always gleeful. Reminds me of a Robert Louis Stevenson poem that we had to learn in kindergarten in my St. Paul Quezon City days. It begins with these lines: "I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,/ And what can be the use of him is more than I can see."

"Look, I'm stepping on your shadow, Booboo!"

Self-portrait with grandchild

"That's the lala of Boots!" Butones cried out when she saw this dachshund. She was referring to the mixed breed dog that she and her Mamay Kimi adopted. And, in her excitement, she said "lala" instead of "lola."

She puts on her pair of sunglasses when the morning sun rises higher.

"It's not yet open, Booboo."

"That one's open na!"

"Spider web! Over there!"

Trying to spot the roof of her house with Mt. Santo Tomas in the background

Beyond those fluffy cotton candy clouds is the China Sea.

Outside the neighbor's gate, I asked Butones, "Can you read out the number for me?" Answer: "It's three-three!"

"It looks like a walis." Indeed, it does look like a broom.

Home again to rock on her Horse With No Name before she steps into the house for her Sunday pancake

When you know the way to Santa Fe

Ceding this space again to friend PAT because of this spot of good news: the latest acclaim Cecile Licad reaped for her country. That's nothing new, of course, because she is nothing less than great wherever she performs.

But the delight was her new hairdo, or shall another friend Amadis term it a hair don't? It's a departure from what her audience, family and admirers are used to. Her shoulder-length tresses have made way for a radical cut. I told Pablo she looks youngish, he said she looks 16 again.

She will win a new audience, and this audience will crave for nothing less than great playing in the future, when she returns here for her one-night evening performance with fellow great dames Lisa Macuja-Elizalde and Lea Salonga, and a series of provincial engagements. The latter concerts are actually more exciting to watch--the audience is quite sincere and spontaneous in their appreciation, even from the first movement alone.

And there's another fan like us out there, who now doubles as correspondent. Doc Lara Halili has followed a number of Cecile's performances all over the States.

So apres vous then, Pabs.

______________________
Licad triumphs anew in Santa Fe

By Pablo A. Tariman

Pianist Cecile Licad -- playing as soloist of the Santa Fe Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra under Thomas O’Connor-- practically reprised her Moscow triumph when she played Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15 at the 820-seater Lensic Performing Arts Center in this city to a rousing standing ovation last January 27.

It is the same piano concerto that got the Filipino pianist her first standing ovation in Moscow in April last year with the Russian State Orchestra.

The following day (January 28), she figured in a solo recital and got the same standing ovation from an audience earlier entranced by her Brahms concerto.

One of the few Filipinos in a predominantly American audience was Dr. Lara Halili, a certified Licad fan who filed a 6-day leave of absence from her hospital work to watch Cecile Licad.

“One of the rewards of leaving your work to watch a great Filipino pianist perform in a foreign land is that you are virtual witness to the fact that she is well-loved by audiences not just in her native country,” said Lara who couldn’t believe the awesome audience response.

Cecile Licad performing at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Licad admitted to her Filipino fan the Brahms concerto is one of the toughest in the repertoire. “Playing that is like climbing a mountain but you are instantly rewarded because the music is so profound,” she told Lara who watched the Licad concerts for two successive nights.

Lara noted that she could literally hear a pin drop in the concerto’s second movement with a super attentive audience stifling their coughing for that rare Licad magic.

“It was a great night,” added Lara. “I was particularly moved to tears by the concerto’s second movement.”

Cecile Licad with conductor Thomas O'Connor acknowledging awesome audience response.


Licad is headed for the Philippines next month before her Boston engagement to perform with Philippine Broadway star Lea Salonga and prima ballerina Lisa Macuja Elizalde with conductor Gerard Salonga and the Filharmonika orchestra on March 17, 2012 at the CCP main theater.

Meanwhile, the two latest CDs of Licad with celebrated German cellist Alban Gerhardt – Casals Encores and Faure cello Sonatas -- continue to receive rave notices.
British music Andrew Clements wrote that Alban Gerhardt's account of Fauré's two cello sonatas, both late works, repay careful listening. “Like the works themselves, his playing and that of the pianist Cecile Licad is full of subtleties, the half-tones and inflections that make the chamber music of Fauré's final decade so elusive and fragile. Nothing here is forced or made to conform; whether it's the urgent outpourings of the first movement of the D minor Sonata Op 109 or the utterly different slow movement of the G minor Op 117, the pacing seems perfectly natural, the colouring distinctive.”

Another British music critic, Jeoffrey Norris, wrote : “A gorgeous performance of the well-known Élégie comes as the first of the five ‘encores’ on this magnificent disc devoted for the most part to Fauré’s two cello sonatas, the D minor, composed in 1917, and the G minor from 1921. The passion and sorrowful rapture that Alban Gerhardt and Cecile Licad bring to the Élégie are complemented by the yearning ardour of a Romance, the virtuoso flutter and bustle of Papillon, the lyrical sweep of the Sérénade and the delicate lilt of the Sicilienne, which is also familiar in orchestral guise.

“This disc follows on from various other, highly distinguished recordings that Gerhardt has made for Hyperion of repertoire ranging from Alkan to Schnittke and Shostakovich, from Chopin to Prokofiev and Reger, and, most recently, of encores made famous by Pablo Casals (CDA67831), on which Gerhardt also teamed up with Licad. They make a particularly fine duo here, working emotionally in unison, sensing the music’s contours with like mind, breathing as one.”

Cecile Licad performs with Philippine Broadway star Lea Salonga and Filipino prima ballerina Lisa Macuja Elizalde on Saturday, March 17, at the CCP Main Theater.

Licad will have two solo performances in the provinces on March 22 at the Holy Angel University in Angeles City and March 27 in Cebu City. Her Pampanga and Cebu program features: Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61; Three Mazurkas op.56;. Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante in E-flat major, Op. 22 and Liszt’s .Miserere du "Trovatore" de Verdi – Paraphrase de Concert and Après une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata Call (02) 7484152 or 09065104270.

All photos by Dr. Lara Halili
Reposted with author's permission from Munting Nayon News Magazine