SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW... SOMETHING NOVEL

Antonio Moral
Artistic Director

The forty-third edition of the Cuenca Religious Music Week has been organised with very similar artistic criteria to the last three editions. Firstly it continues to place a heavy emphasis on the revival of the traditional repertoire, offering a wide selection of first performances, historical recoveries and works that are heard infrequently, as well as those taken from the most revered pages of the sacred repetoire throughout history which must form part of a festival such as that of Cuenca. Here we are again with the new, the old, and the novel going together to form the basis of a line up that hopes to be musically rich and varied, rigorous in its choosing of performers and which will take place over ten packed days with a total of twenty two sessions of concerts and liturgical services which will take place in the usual venues of the Teatro-Auditorio, the Cathedral, the churches of San Miguel and Arcos, the former Convent of the Barefoot Carmelites which is now the Antonio Pérez Foundation; and in two venues which will be used for the first time in the festival: the Convent of the Religious Justinians of Saint Peter and the Monastary of the Franciscan Conception.


Commemorations and anniversaries.
The current edition of the Religious Music Week will pay special attention to some of the most important commemorative events which will be celebrated throughout 2004. In chronological order it is necessary to speak first of the concert that will take place in the evening of Tuesday 6 th April dedicated to the commemoration of the five-hundreth anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth I “The Catholic Queen” in Medina Del Campo on the 26 th November 1504. With this in mind,the musicologist and conductor Luis Lozano Virumbrales has put together a programme with works by Francisco de la Torre, Pedro de Escobar, Pedro Pastrana, Juan de Anchieta and other anonymous musicians of the epoch with which he hopes to reconstruct, for the first time in our era, the funeral celebration of the House of Trastamara handed down from the crown of Castilla, which took place first in the Cathedral of Segovia and then some days later in the Convent of San Francisco in Granada when the body was entombed. Also the Religious Music Week could not leave aside the commemoration of the 500 years since the foundation of the Monastery of the Franciscan Conception in Cuenca, in whose church this celebration will take place and whose order had a close relationship with Queen Elizabeth, given that it was she who donated part of the land of the palaces of Galiana in Toledo to the order's founder Santa Beatriz de Silva, so that this new religious congregation created by twelve devout women could begin its work.

A day later, on the night of Easter Wednesday 7 th April a highlight in the programme will be one of the most singular instrumental works of John Dowland (1563-1626), the evocative series of variations for violas , Lachrimae or Seven Teares which were composed 400 years ago. Dowlands' Tears will be heard interspersed between the eight movements of the thrilling Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) as the centrepiece of an outstanding line up which will begin with the world premiere of Advenit by David Del Puerto (Madrid 1964) written for the same musical grouping of quartet as used by the genial french musician, and which will end, on the stroke of midnight with the celebrated Semper Dowland semper dolens , a piece which seems to have been written out of time and which reflects like no other the profound melancholy of its author.

Equally noteworthy will be the celebration of the III Centenary of the death of the great French musician Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) whose musical personality was somewhat eclipsed in his time due to the enormous popularity of Jean-Babtiste Lully (1632-1687) who was able to count on the patronage of the powerful and influential court of the Sun King. Charpentier, known above all by a larger public for television's use of his prelude to the celebrated Te Deum is, however, the author of a copius and important body of work – more than 500 pieces among which we can find many fine ecclesiastical pieces especially those which were written after the 1680s when he was was linked to the Parisian Church of Saint Louis of the Order of Jesus as the maître de musique . From this time date two works written in honour of the Virgen Mary which will be heard in the second part of the inaugural concert on Good Friday which has also been put together by Jordi Savall and which will be completed with other rarely performed sacred works by the German composer and organist Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654) — it is also the 350 th anniversary of his death — and whose production of sacred works falls strictly within the purest German Baroque tradition started by his colleagues Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) and Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630) and which would reach its finest expression in the following century with the work of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) and G.F. Haendel (1685-1759). Once again from Charpentier, a week later, on the night of Easter Friday, the elegant french conductor Emmanuelle Haïm — making her debut in Cuenca — will give us the opportunity to hear, for the first time in Spain, one of the most representative pieces of the dramatic ouevre of the author of Les Arts Florissants : the biblical tragedy in a prologue and five acts entitled David et Jonathas with a libretto in french by Père Bretonneau which was heard for the first time in the French capital in 1688, together with an oratorio in latin on the same theme entitled Saül, both works being premiered in the jesuit college of Sant Louis-le-Grand by students of the centre. That is to say that here we have an important work which will help us to reveal a little more the art of this “poet of the shadows and master of soft and intimate touches” of whom Stefano Russomano has written about so well in his brilliant introduction to the inaugural concert.

Two centuries later, in 1904, Antonin Dvorák died in Prague at the age of 64, a wonderful musician who years later would become world famous for his celebrated New World Symphony. However, in a similar way to Charpentier, the sacred music of this composer, excepting his Stabat Mater op. 58, is almost completely absent from spanish stages. In Cuenca , to cite just one example close at hand, in the forty-two editions of the festival, there has been only one large choral work by Dvorák: The Requiem op. 89 in 1991. Twelve years later in 2003 the great Czech soprano Eva Urbanová sang with great delicacy the emotional Biblical songs op. 94 as well as the more well known Ave Maria from the cantata The spectre's bride op. 69 . And that's all. It seems almost an obligation therefore, that the Cuenca Festival takes advantage of the centenary of his death, by programming more of his religious works. There will be three in total: the Psalm op. 149 (1879) the Mass in D Major op. 86 (1877) and the magnificent Te Deum op. 103 (1892); a mature work, beautifully written and of profound religious sentiment. For the performance we are able to count on the expert members of the Czech National Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Choir and four vocal soloists all under the guiding hand of the veteran Slovenian conductor Ondrej Lenard.


Revivals and Premieres.
As well as the musical revivals already mentioned such as the music which could be heard in Segovia and Granada in 1504 when the funeral rites of Elizabeth “The Catholic Queen” were celebrated, the Festival in Cuenca will present in its latest edition, as it has been doing in recent years, some works by important musicians which have been unjustifiably forgotten over time. And as well as this the Festival will also revive an old and successsful practice of the early editions : that of giving an outstanding Spanish musician, in this case Albert Recasens , the job of studying and transcribing a forgotten piece of music. In the catalogue of the Cathedral of Cuenca we have the example of a work by Felice Anerio (1516-1614) titled Responsoria ad lecciones divini offici feriae quartae, quintae et sextae Sanctae Hebdomodae (Alosyo Zanetti, Rome 1606). This important edition contains 27 responsories by the Italian composer who was a student of G.M. Nanino and later, from 1594 onwards, was the successor to the great Palestrina in the Papal chapel in Rome . The recovery of this piece of music to be interpreted, in part, within the festival, will allow the modern listener to discover one of most interesting responsories of the Triduo Sacro of the Renaissance (along with the better known works by M.A. Ingigneri and T.L. de Victoria) and which we will be able to hear this year almost in its entirety. Recasens studied the music written by Anerio by comparing it with the example of this work that is kept in the Guilia Chapel in the Vatican seeing that Zanetti's book in the Cathedral archive in Cuenca is incomplete. The programme which will be performed by the Viena Consort in the Church of San Miguel on the night of Easter Tuesday will be premiered along with two works that are already known : the responsory of matins on Maundy Thursday Tristis est anima mea and the Lectio I of Lamentations of Jeremias on Easter Saturday, both composed by the Alonso Lobo of Seville(1555-1617) another of the great Spanish polyphonic composers, who had strong connections with the Cathedrals of Seville and Toledo and some of whose works are conserved in the Cathedral of Cuenca.

Not forgetting the Spanish Golden Age, this new edition of the Cuenca Religious Music Week is pulling out all the stops with its production — for the second time in its history —of one of the most interesting and important of all polyphonic works: the Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae (Rome 1585) by the master Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), which was edited in its entirety for the first time by Felipe Pedrell in volume V of the Opera Omnia (Leipzig 1902-1913). Years later in 1977 Samuel Rubio published a critical edition of the work in Cuenca under the auspices of, and published by, the Cuenca Religious music Week which served as an introduction to the presentation of the piece in a concert which took place on 22 nd and 23 rd March 1978 in the Church of San Miguel in the same place where it will be performed this year. The basic difference between these historic events of 26 years ago, performed by the Tomás Luis Vocal Quartet, is that they only performed the polyphonic parts of the work by this native of Avila . This time, in contast, this impressive work by Victoria will be performed in the most appropriate context for liturgical celebration, which requires the inclusion of the hymns and verses in plain song as well as the alternating verses of the psalms and the lamentations or the solo voices in the Passions that, although they will not be offered in their entirety, will give us a much fuller idea of the real context in which these religious works were sung in the Easter festivities at the end of the XVI Century. Furthermore we have tried to make the principal parts of the matins service on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday coincide with the concerts celebrated on the Holy days leaving out just a few pieces on Palm Sunday. This ambitious project was commissoned two years ago by the artistic directors of the Music Week from Josep Cabré, founder and conductor of La Columbina, and he has been in charge of the preparation and co-ordination, accepting the sage advice given by Juan Carlos Asensio , who will also be participating in the programme leading his Schola Antiqua, the group which filled the Cathedral with the sound of its voices four years ago during the liturgical celebrations of the Tridou Sacro and the Mass for Easter Sunday, thus reviving a centuries old tradition that should never have been lost and which now lives again in all its former splendor.

Another important revival is the one brought to us by that inquisitive and magnificent interpreter of medieval music, Miguel Sanchez, on Monday 5 th April with a programme entitled “Simulata Sanctitas” which takes us on a fascinating trip through the convent music of the Late Middle Age. The concert which was conceived and arranged entirely by the founder of Alia Mvsica, will offer a wide range of pieces from spanish, central-european, french and italian codices as well as several works by the French cleric Philippe de Vitry (1296-1361),the archbishop of Meaux and a diplomat in the service of several French kings in the XIV century, who criticised the abuses and veniality of the papal court at Avignon in some of his motets as we will be able to hear in the motet Dantur officia/ Quid scire produit which is attributed to him. The concert will take place in one of the new venues which will be used in this years festival: the recently restored church of the Convent of the Religious Justinians of Saint Peter, popularly known throughout the city as the ‘Convento de las Petras'. Finally it is necessary to mention the attractive programme which will close the Festival on Easter Sunday brought to us by Eduardo López Banzo, tireless searcher of musical treasures and expert in the Spanish Baroque which he has promoted and defended so well since 1988 with the creation of the group Al Ayre Español. “A batallar estrellas” is an attempt to bring to the fore the great religious repetoire of the XVII Century in Spain and will include, for the first time in a single concert, a selection of of masterpieces written for a double choir using the surprising sound effects highly characteristic of the great iberian works which filled Spanish Cathedrals with music for almost two centuries. Al Ayre Español will demonstrate the wide range of possibilities offered by the villancico in Spain and America throughout the XVII Century and the beginning of the XVIII Century. Of the fourteen selected works, from the oldest composer — Juan Buatista Comes (1582?-1643) to the most recent — Sebastián Durón (1660-1716), the audience will have the opportunity to become a little more familiar with this attractive musical genre and will be able discover six works which will be heard for the first time in our era, as for example with the Magnificat de quarto tono by Alonso Xuárez (unknown-1696) which was recently found in the musical archive of the Cathedral of Cuenca.

Another of the fundamental aims of the Religious Music Week has always been, alongside the recovery of forgotten pieces, the presentation of new works. This year we are able to add three new pieces to the forty-four already written by so many well-known composers, to be premiered in Cuenca over the forty-two editions of the Festival. The first two works have been commissioned from two of the most active young Spanish composers of the moment, José María Sánchez Verdú (Algeciras, Cadiz 1968) and David del Puerto ( Madrid , 1964) and the third from the veteran American composer and pianist Terry Riley (Colfax, California, 1935). Sánchez Verdú's work TENEBRAE (Memoria del Fuego) , written for choir and orchestra will be premiered on Palm Sunday by the Czech National Orchestra and the Prague Chamber Choir conducted by Ondrei Lenard. David del Puerto 's work Advenit will be premiered on Wednesday 7 th April in the Church of San Miguel by the quartet of M. Thomas (violin), M. Stirling (cello), J.E. Lluna (clarinet) and J. Gruithuyzen (piano) and will lead into Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time (1940) and the Lachrimae of J. Dowland. With the premiere of Archangels by Terry Riley the Festival begins a series of commissions from well known foreign composers with the idea of bringing other nationalities to the impressive roll call of premieres in Cuenca written exclusively by contemparary Spanish composers. The work by this multi-faceted American will be premiered in San Miguel on Monday 5 th April. It has been composed for eight cellos and was commissioned by the Cuenca Religious Week in collaboration with the Conjunto Ibérico de Violenchelos under the tireless Elías Arizcuren , a genuine ambassador for contemporary Spanish music and the catalyst for an ambitious series of commissions of religious and spiritual works by the most outstanding international composers. The concert was conceived as a tribute to the figure of Carmelo Bernaola who should have celebrated his 75 th birthday this year but died of a sudden illness on June 5 th 2002. Closely linked to Cuenca from his earliest days firstly as a lecturer and later as a composer and conductor of his own work, Bernaola premiered two commissioned works for the Festival : Las negociaciones de Pedro and Las siete palabras de nuestro redentor en la Cruz (1984). This year we will be presenting his Superficie nº. 2 for solo cello (1962) followed by “...Eleison” which is a deeply felt tribute to Bernaola by Luis de Pablo which he began to work on when he heard about the illness of the Basque composer and which he fiinshed shortly after his death. The work was premiered on June 10 th 2004 in Madrid by the Conjunto Ibérico de Violonchelos and will be played for the first time in Cuenca alongside two other compositions: Arquitecturas de la ausencia (2003) by Sánchez Verdú and Windungen ( 1992) by Xenakis.

Great music, Great musicians.
Any music festival that makes claims to be ambitious must necessarily include great traditional works in its programme but also requires great musicians to play them. This is the case with one of the highlights of the Central-european Baroque, the Mass in C Minor BWV 232 by J.S. Bach which we will be able to hear for the third time in the history of the Cuenca Religious Music Festival (the other times were in 1964 and 2002) thanks to one of the masters who is most familiar with the music of the the Kantor of Leipzig, the British conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who will be visiting Cuenca for the first time , fronting one of the finest European ensembles in the field of Baroque and Classical music: the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, founded in 1964 and 1991 respectively. A similar case is that of the French clavichord player and conductor Christophe Rousset, the creator of the vocal and instrumental group Les Talens Lyriques who are also making their debut in the city and will do it with an unusual programme of Easter Lamentations written by two very interesting French and Italian Baroque composers: The parisian François Couperin (1668-1733) and the neapolitan Leonardo Leo (1694-1744). The venitian Antonio Caldara (1670-1736) will also be represented with his motet O Sacrum Convivium op. 4 . Gustav Leonhardt is returning to the festival for the third time in four years after his acclaimed clavichord recital last year in the Antonio Pérez Foundation, and he will be here with an interesting overview of the French and German sacred and profane Baroque repertory. The concert will take place on the morning of Easter Saturday in a very speacial context: the intimate and secluded Romanesque church in Arcas. Another unmissable event will be the second appearance of Jordi Savall in the morning recital on Palm Sunday as a soloist of the viola da gamba, an instrument at which the catalan musician so often excels. The programme entitled “Les Voix Humaines” has been played around the world by Savall and now we have the chance to hear it in a magical setting in Cuenca : the Sala Millares of the former Carmelite Convent. Among the Spanish orchestras that have been invited we can pick out the third visit to Cuenca of the Galicia Sinfonica under Víctor Pablo Pérez. On this occasion for their performance on Easter Saturday, they will be accompanied by the Madrid Community Choir — another of the regular Festival performers — together with four outstanding vocal soloists (Cinzia Forte, Isabel Monar, Steve Davislim and José Antonio López ). The programme consists of a highly interesting Mozart selection which includes the juvenile and rarely performed Passion Cantata: "Grabmusik" K 42 / K 35a written by the genius of Salzburg for Good Friday celebrations when he was barely twelve years old. We will also be able to hear the wonderful Mass in C Minor K 427 and the difficult tenor aria taken from the oratorio Davide Penitente K 469 composed two years after the mass, using a large part of its music. Finally the National Spanish Youth Orchestra will be here in Cuenca for the third year running as the resident orchestra and will take on the monumental and complicated 8 th Symphony by Bruckner (1842-1896) under the baton of Antoni Ros Marbà, absent from the festival since 1986. This will be the third symphony by the great Austrian composer that has been performed in Cuenca during the Festival after symphonies N.° 7 (1990) and N.° 9 (2002).