Mexico City, September 8, 2024. With the commemoration of the centenary of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, the third season of the UNAM Philharmonic Orchestra (OFUNAM) began this weekend, exploring the rich connections between music and literature.
Watch the presentation of Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos (Athens, 1967), praised for his impeccable sound, articulation and musicality, with the Brahms Violin Concerto that he recorded a decade ago with Ricardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
In addition to the extraordinary program on November 29 and 30, Kavakos will give master classes to young musicians from the Faculty of Musical Arts and other schools such as the Superior School of Music and the National Conservatory, confirmed José Julio Díaz Infante, head of Music at UNAM.
The concert season kicks off under the baton of Enrique Diemecke with the Orchestral Paraphrase of Aura, by Mario Lavista, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss, works related to literature and philosophy to celebrate the centenary of the faculty.
In addition to the overture to the opera The Wreckers by the English feminist and suffragette Ethel Smyth, a friend of Virginia Woolf, a composer who worked at a time when “it was believed that women were incapable of writing good music,” according to researcher Lucy Caplan.
Another of her works, Der Wald (The Forest), which the Metropolitan Opera House produced in 1903, was the only opera by a woman in over a century at that theater.
OFUNAM will present the world premieres of four works: 1954, Symphony of the Gold and Blue Passion, commissioned by Rodrigo Valdez Hermoso to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Pumas; Formid 1, by José Luis Hurtado; Descarga de cámara, by Roberto Carbajal, and Tundra, by Nubia Jaime-Donjuan.
During the UNAM Culture Festival, in addition to the concert by tenor Rolando Villazón, Juliana Faesler’s staging of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be presented with incidental music by Mendelssohn and a program of new Mexican music with works by Sonia Rodríguez González, Gina Enríquez, José Luis Hurtado and Samuel Zyman.
Díaz Infante is also planning a special OFUNAM concert in November with film music for UNAM high school students, as part of the Vive el CCU program of Cultura UNAM.
The young people will be taken by truck to the University Cultural Center so they can meet him.
With the Eduardo Mata University Youth Orchestra, tenor Arturo Chacón will commemorate the centenary of the death of Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) on September 29.
Within the Chamber Music program there will be a first cycle of traditional music with six concerts in the Carlos Chávez Hall and in the Simón Bolívar Amphitheater.
“It is music that we are used to listening to in open spaces, generally, because that is its nature and obviously there is a tradition, but it also has a harmonic and rhythmic richness that deserves to be heard in a concert hall setting,” Díaz Infante said.
The cycle began this Saturday at 6 pm with the quartet of harpist Celso Duarte at Carlos Chávez with sones jarochos and jaliscienses, pirekuas, chilenas and waltzes from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Paraguayan polkas and Ecuadorian pasillo.
You can check the complete program at musica.unam.mx.
Text and photo from the archive: Agencia Reforma
