Placitas Artists Season Opens
Violist Willy Sucre Featured
A Willy Sucre and Friends concert with works by composers Eduardo Gamboa and Javier Alvarez opens the 201213 Placitas Artists Series season Sunday.
Sucre, a violist, said the program is dedicated to Gamboa and Alvarez, whom he described as two of the greatest Mexican composers.
La Catrina String Quartet, which is in residence at New Mexico State University, will play Gamboa’s “Cañambú” and Alvarez’s “Canción de Tierra y Esperanza.”
“Cañambú has a kind of sweetness to it,” Sucre said. “It has a lot of music for percussion instruments that are represented in Cuban rhythms, and this quartet has a lot of that feeling. Rhythmically, this piece is extremely challenging. It has beautiful melodies but underneath everything it has this motor rhythm that is always driving the piece.”
Gamboa lived for a while in Cuba, where he wrote music for film.
Alvarez’s piece has the same rhythmic energy as the Gamboa, but with more of a Mexican flavor because it is based in Mexican folk tunes, Sucre noted.
The second half of the program features Ludwig van
Beethoven’s Viola Quintet (Opus 29).
“It’s the most intriguing of all of (his viola quintets),” Sucre said.
“I think it was written when Beethoven was at the top of his game. It is an interesting piece in the sense that in the first two movements you can feel Mozart in it, his style. But in the last two movements it changes to the romantic side of Beethoven …”
One reason Sucre included the work in the program is because it’s hardly ever played.
“I think it’s beginning to gain some light. It’s very imaginative. It’s full of wit and humor. It has an incredible dose of style,” he said.
The quintet is nicknamed “The Storm,” probably because of the exceedingly rapid passages in the last movement, Sucre explained.
The final work on the program is Heitor Villa-Lobos’ String Quartet No. 5.
Sucre remembers having played this with the Helios String Quartet in Placitas many years ago.
“It is perhaps one of the quartets that represents Brazil at its best. It has syncopated dances. It has a typical Brazilian flavor especially in the first movement,” he said.
“The second movement totally changes in the sense that it represents a lot of the jungle — humidity, heat, the sound of animals.”
According to the Placitas Artists Series website, the work of artists Marjie Bassler, Renee Brainard Gentz, Damien M. Gonzales and Patricia Gould will be on display in conjunction with the concert.