Pianist who lives, composes and writes from the place where he was born, in the bosom of a family with a genealogical tree from which instruments, eighth notes and sounds from Medina de Rioseco hang. A musical childhood marked by his father and uncle, as well as Miguel Frechilla and Félix Antonio, who, among others, inspired his vocation. It is National Music Award and has a history full of concerts and recognitions. More than 300 premieres of Spanish music for piano. He has rescued numerous scores by forgotten Spanish authors. His intellectual depth and his training and permanent dedication to contemporary music has earned him to be considered a reference within the Spanish musical heritage. But the trait that most characterizes him is his friendliness, always attached to his land. Professor, composer and prolific writer. It is a luxury to enjoy their piano concerts and have a great musician who we can see walking among us.
Question.- Pianist and musician. Since when?
Answer .- Since always. According to my mother, when I was one year old what I liked was to play with objects that produced sounds, I think the vocation is with sound. The musician has it the same as Rodin, who with a piece of clay believed that the sky was opening to him. Sound is where you hold on to never let go.
Q.- Do you act as a riosecano?
A.- Yes. I was born in Rioseco, right next to Santa María, and I live here. For me it is a necessity because all the streets of Rioseco have a meaning and are linked to people, events … it is living in another way, living with the past in front of you.
Q.- What you do, does it reach the common?
R.- The type of music that I do arrives little. In general, contemporary music, which is what I do the most, is unfortunately little spread. I am and many people are in Spain, fortunately more and more.
Q.- What inspires Diego Magdaleno the most?
A.- Really what interests me the most is what I am doing at that moment. The score I have on the music stand. Maybe because if you want to know what you love, look at what you are doing. If a composer had to say that I play, study and listen every day of my life, Johann Sebastián Bach would say.
Q.- Miguel Delibes has also been a source of inspiration for you.
A.- Yes, he is a figure that has always accompanied me. The first text that I published in my life, in the San Buenaventura school magazine in Rioseco, was about some stories by Delibes. On a walk with Frechilla, we met him and from then on I saw him many times. On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, I have made a program that I am playing in many places, with music dedicated to him and with scores by Joaquín Díaz, because Delibes liked the popular very much. The first time I did it, Germán Delibes told me that one of the pieces he had played was sung a lot by his mother.
Q.- Would it be a different world if schools and universities gave more value to music?
A.- It is true that, from a general and objective point of view, if we take a person with a certain culture, surely he knows who Kafka is but he does not know who Alban Berg is. Music is not part of the general culture of many people and they should have it because it corresponds to those other facets. A writer always quotes a great painter, a sculptor, an architect… but when he quotes a musician, he does not do so with musicians of the height.
Q.- And Medina de Rioseco has inspired you?
R.- Without a doubt. I do not live in Rioseco as in a residence without more. What I like is living Rioseco. It is a familiar landscape and at the same time it is inexhaustible. I go up every day and I see Santa María, San Francisco and I see it as something familiar and as if it were the first time, because I need it in music.
Q.- Do you have to understand music to enjoy a piano concert?
R. – What is necessary is to listen. The moment you sit in front of an orchestra what you hear is a mass, later you hear sections, instruments, nuances within the instruments and the same happens with other facets. Any reduction of the music we have to see. Music is made for everyone, we all have music for us. Where there is a human being, there is music.
Q.- What score do you have on the keyboard?
A.- Now I have the Delibes project and a program called ‘Dialogues with Kurtág’, a fascinating Hungarian composer, in which we interpret music from him and from Spanish composers from different periods, establishing a dialogue between them. It makes us listen to music from the inside out from the outside.
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