OVERNIGHT REVIEW: Santa Cecilia Orchestra honors composer Daniel Catán

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Santa Cecilia Orchestra. Sonia Marie de León de Vega, conductor
Friday, May 22, 2011 • Thorne Hall (Occidental College)
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With thousands of musicians working in the entertainment industry throughout Southern California, this region hosts an unusually large number of quality orchestras, some of which have thriving niche markets. One of those is the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, which for 18 years has used concerts and educational programs to bring classical music to the Hispanic community (which is no longer small enough to be called “niche”).

For the final concert of its 2010-2011 season yesterday at Occidental Colllege’s Thorne Hall, Music Director Sonia Marie de León de Vega had planned to honor composer Daniel Catán, who was born in Mexico but lived in South Pasadena for many years. Catán attended the orchestra’s concerts regularly; his wife is the orchestra’s harpist, although she didn’t perform yesterday for understandable reasons.

Catán died unexpectedly on April 8 at the age of 62 while teaching and composing an opera in Austin, Tex. Thus, this concert became a memorial celebration but there was no sadness to it. Although de León de Vega wrote a touching remembrance in the program, there were no speeches or pictures about Catán … nothing, in fact, but three short pieces (they totaled less than 30 minutes) that touched on elements of Catán’s compositional life.

For many in audience, the piece with which Catán is indelibly linked is his final opera, Il Postino (The Postman), which received its world premiere at Los Angeles Opera last September to ecstatic audience reaction and critical reviews. It later debuted in Vienna and will open at Le Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris next month.

The middle of the three pieces yesterday, an Intermezzo for Oboe d’amore from Il Postino, featured a limpid, plaintive solo from the orchestra’s principal oboe, Sarah Beck, accompanied by well-known guest harpist Paul Baker. De León de Vega emphasized the lush orchestral music that Catán wrote in this Puccini-esque opera as she and the orchestra discretely accompanied the soloists.

The opening piece was a three-minute Overture that Catán wrote for the Mexican “telenovela” (a.k.a. soap opera) El Vuelo del Águila (The Flight of the Eagles) in the 1990s. Beginning with Rachel Berry’s winsome French horn solo, de León de Vega conducted the waltz melodies in a straightforward fashion.

The first half concluded with Caribbean Airs, Catán’s 20-minute, three-movement homage to the sort of Cuban music that he said in a program note were among his earliest musical memories. Percussionists Jason Goodman, Brad Dutz and Bruce Carver were the frolicking soloists, joined by several of the orchestra’s percussionists in the jazzy two outer movements, which bracketed a meditative inner movement that spotlighted the orchestra’s lush string sections.

After intermission, de León de Vega and her ensemble, augmented by 14 percussionists, gave a highly credible account of Silvestre Revueltas’ La noche de los Mayas. Revueltas (who was born literally on the cusp of the 20th century — Dec. 31, 1899) originally wrote this piece as film music in 1939, a year before he died, but today most of us know it through a four-movement concert suite created in 1960 by José Limantour.

Apart from some smudgy horn work, the opening emphasized mystery. The second movement danced with pulsating joy, the third movement again spotlighted the ensemble’s lush string sections and the fourth movement — with its percussion-section cadenza — finished in a blaze of colorful glory. As is always the case, the audience went bonkers at the conclusion.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

Comments

[vibram five fingers]

De León de Vega emphasized the lush orchestral music that Catán wrote in this Puccini-esque opera as she and the orchestra discretely accompanied the soloists.