Diez Nieto receives ovation from colleagues and students at farewell

October 26, 2021

It was not silence but an ovation that bid farewell last Sunday to Alfredo Diez Nieto at the end of the funeral services at the Necrópolis de Colón.

Upon his death near midnight on Saturday, October 23rd from a heart attack, he was just one day short of turning 103 years old.

The prolonged and sustained applause from his family members, colleagues, disciples and people who greatly loved the dean of Cuban composers exalted the value of an indispensable work in the repertoire of concert music from twentieth-century Cuba, the generosity of a pedagogical practice and infinite dedication to the promotion of the representative traits of national identity.

In life he was recognized with the Orden Félix Varela of First Grade, the National Prize for Music, the National Prize for Artistic Teaching, the status of Member of Merit of the Uneac (he was part of its National Council and actively participated in the organization's Congresses and the Havana Festivals of contemporary music) and the title Master of Youths awarded by the AHS.

Passion and intelligence he put into each score; the passion of someone who never wrote a single chord foreign to his state of mind, and intelligence to apply the maximum possible rigor to the creative act.
He studied and knew as few in our milieu the currents and styles of European composers, from Bach to Debussy, from Beethoven to Mahler, Bruckner and the second Viennese school, but with a sharp mind and awakened heart he chose to be a continuator of the national avant-garde conquered by Roldán and Caturla.

This is evident in most of his catalog, which includes three symphonies, and works for soloists and various instrumental formats. It is worth pausing particularly on his piano works in a trajectory that began with the series Estampas (1938) and extended until the beginning of the current century, when he wrote Cimarrón, impressed by the testimonial novel of the same name by Miguel Barnet.

His Grand sonata for piano qualifies as one of the most forceful scores ever conceived by a Latin American composer of all time, although one should also highlight, in another instrumental order, the Sonata for solo violin, dedicated to Evelio Tieles, who is right in saying that "he expresses himself in Cuban, sounds in Cuban, makes his own the essence of our people," and the Sonata for flute, from his most recent work, premiered by Niurka González. It was precisely in the year 2000 that he finished Concerto no. 1 for piano, conceived so that someday Jorge Luis Prats would perform it.

In these times, one facet of the master could be inspiring: the work developed starting in 1947 alongside Odilio Urfé at the Instituto Musical de Investigaciones Folclóricas and the Seminar of Popular Music in the old church of Paula, which led him to lead the Orquesta Popular de Conciertos Gonzalo Roig.

Numerous students from various generations, trained by Diez Nieto, circulated messages of condolence upon the master's death, in which they also expressed gratitude and commitment to the mission of keeping his legacy alive.