Cecilio Tieles Ferrer

Pianist, musicologist and pedagogue. Outstanding instrumentalist who also dedicates himself to musical research. And continues investigating one of the themes that most captivates him: Afro-Hispanic culture.

Cecilio was born in El Cerro, into a very musical family, but his early years were spent on Havana's Calle Estrella. His father, Evelio Tieles Soler, despite having been a renowned dentist, studied music as a child. Music always occupied a prominent place in his life; to such an extent that he came to be part of notable popular orchestras, such as that of Aniceto Díaz, creator of the danzonete.

In the lower floors of his house was located his father's dental office, who always listened to the CMBF radio station dedicated to classical music. His mother, Digna Ferrer Mason, daughter of Catalan emigrants, was born in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba, was educated in Catalonia and there studied piano.

Cecilio began his musical studies with Arturo Marcelín. In 1952 he continued them in Paris, where he was a student of Madeleine Berthelier, Joseph Benvenutti and Marcel Ciampi.

In 1957 he entered the National Conservatory of Paris. Between 1958 and 1966, he completed his academic training at the Chaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, with professors Samuel Feinberg, Ludmila Roschina and Stanislav Neuhaus.

In 1966 he obtained the IV Prize in the Viana Da Motta Competition, in Portugal, and in 1969, the VIII, in the International Margueritte Long-Jaques Thibaud Competition, in Paris, France.

In Cuba, Cecilio Tieles has developed an outstanding career as a concert pianist, and has offered numerous concerts as a soloist and with provincial and national symphony orchestras. He has also participated in multiple international events and specialized critics have praised his virtues as a performer and music professional. Tieles has performed as a soloist in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the USA, and has also participated in various international festivals.

His repertoire includes symphonic and chamber works by diverse composers and varied styles, from the 17th century to the contemporary period. He has offered concerts as a soloist or accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra and other symphonic and chamber ensembles of Cuba.

In 1970, in the city of Santa Clara, he performed for the first time in Cuba, all five piano concertos by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. He has toured his country and participated in the Contemporary Music Days, Socialist Countries Festival and Contemporary Music Festival, organized by the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.

He has performed under the direction of Olaf Koch, Gunter Herbig, Enrique González Mántici, Manuel Duchesne Cuzán, among others. He was invited to participate in the festivals of Barcelona, Bratislava, Quito, among others.

He has recorded for the Company of Recordings and Musical Editions (EGREM) and other record companies abroad. He worked as a professor and head of the Piano Department at the National School of Art from 1967 to 1980 and at the Higher Institute of Art from 1977 to 1984.

He participated, as National Advisor, in the reform of piano teaching in Cuba that took place in 1968. He was founding director of the Contemporary Cuban Music Days of the National Union of Writers from 1977 to 1984.

His thesis to obtain the degree of doctor, defended at the Higher Institute of Art, was about the figure of Cuban composer, pianist and pedagogue Nicolás Ruiz Espadero. It was the first thesis defended by a musician at this educational institution. About Espadero, Cecilio Tieles says: "This work attempts to demonstrate his historical and artistic transcendence.

From him on, the Cuban musician is no longer an amateur who hides his name under initials, as was the usual practice then; he is an artist who prepares himself properly from an early age to pursue his profession; the concept of professional musician acquires a real content of mastery at the highest level. He is the first to achieve, through his results and artistic achievements, international recognition."

To complete this research work, he recorded, in 2004, for the first time, a CD with works by Espadero; notably, the rescue of the Fantasia-Ballade (1858) by the mentioned artist stands out.

Composers such as Cubans Alfredo Diez Nieto, Roberto Valera, Juan Piñera and Spaniard Ramón Barce, have dedicated works to him. Together with his brother Evelio, he forms the Dúo Tieles, for which works have been written by, among others, Ramón Barce, Xavier Benguerel, Harold Gramatges, José Ardévol, Nilo Rodríguez, Gottfried Glöckner, Salvador Pueyo.

In 1984 he was invited as a professor of the Professional Music Conservatory of Vila-Seca and professor at the Higher Music Conservatory of the Liceo de Barcelona. In both conservatories he contributed to promoting profound reforms that were unprecedented experiences in Spain.

In 1988 he toured Bulgaria: "The Passoyaglia (second version) by Juan Piñera was unexpectedly successful there, a work preferred by me and which has actually been very well received wherever I have played it [...].

In Bulgaria he performed in several cities, Sliven, Polbujin, Varna and Vidin; in the latter he played with their symphony orchestra the Nights in the Gardens of Spain by Manuel de Falla. The reaction of the public made me feel satisfied and I returned to Spain with sufficient enthusiasm to continue working."

In the German Democratic Republic he performed, in the chamber music hall of the Schausspielhaus, Passoyaglia; The Pretty Girl, by Manuel Saumell; Banjo, by Louis Moreau Gottschalk; Sonata op. 2 no. 3, and Moonlight, op. 27 no. 2, by Ludwig van Beethoven; Songs and Dances by Federico Mompou and eight Études (from op. 10 and 25) by Federico Chopin.

In Barcelona, at the El Greco Festival of that city, he performed Concerto No. 2, op. 18, for piano and orchestra, by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov, accompanied by the Orquesta Ciutat de Barcelona, conducted by Javier Golz.

In 1989 he expressed to José Amer: "These four years, almost five, have been a series of transcendental turns in my career. Until that moment, my main interest as a performer was to constantly expand the repertoire without reaching a perfection of what I was doing.

Sometimes I asked myself how far it would be possible to accumulate works and then play them in public, because all the effort I deployed in it and all the emotional weight that I placed in the different social and cultural activities that I undertook in Cuba didn't even find an artistic compensation in terms of results, because so much repertoire didn't allow me to achieve interpretive perfection.

In these last years here, I have calmly dedicated myself to maturing the works, improving them and perfecting them, which doesn't mean I will stop incorporating new ones."

He founded, together with other artists, in 1995 the Catalan-Iberoamerican Cultural Association, of which he is president. From that year onwards he organizes Catalan-Iberoamerican Music Cycles in Tarragona, whose objective is to disseminate the music of Iberoamerican countries.

An experience that he carries out, in collaboration with UNEAC, in Havana. In 1999, singer Anna Ricci invites him to serve as vice president of the Catalan Association of Classical Music Performers, which, since February 2001, following the death of the singer, he has presided over.

After more than two decades of research, he publishes Espadero, Music and Nation in Colonial Cuba, (corrected and expanded edition of Espadero and the Musical Hispanic in Cuba). Rarely do we find a book in which scientific rigor and expository clarity coincide equally.

Its wisdom lies, among other things, in that he has combined his own thinking with the great accumulation of documents and points of view of so many other specialists —to support his thesis or to disagree with them—, without losing the guiding thread of what he wants to demonstrate, not always achievable for someone who handles such a vast and complex critical apparatus.

Evidence of his talent is the recreation of the era in which Espadero lived and performed, not only in Cuba, but also in Spain and other European countries that knew the work of the famous Cuban pianist of the 19th century.

An important part of his work is the activity of the duo that he integrates with his brother, violinist Evelio Tieles. The Tieles duo has earned the praise of music specialists in several countries and has accumulated a vast repertoire of works of different styles and periods.

Cecilio Tieles has been invited to participate as a jury member in national and international piano competitions, such as the following: Ciutat de Manresa (Spain); Xavier Montsalvatge (Spain); Ernesto Lecuona (Cuba); Ignacio Cervantes (Cuba); III Iberoamerican Piano Competition "National School of Art", Havana (Cuba); International Festival of Latin American Music (Bolivia); International Competition "Paul Badura-Skoda" (Spain); International Piano Competition (Principality of Andorra) and International Piano Competition "Cidade del Ferrol" (Galicia, Spain).