Guerra-Madrigal: the piano grows

April 11, 2021

To the ascending spiral of Cuban piano repertoire, which has its roots in the tradition of Saumell, Ruiz Espadero, Cervantes and Lecuona, a new but hardly surprising turn has just been added with the circulation of the work of Yalil Guerra, performed by Marcos Madrigal.

The premiere of the album Yalil Guerra Piano Music Marcos Madrigal (Rycy label), recorded at the Abbey Rocchi studio in Rome, will take place under the patronage of don Fernando Ortiz, as this April 10th marks the fifty-second anniversary of the death of the anthropologist whom Juan Marinello described as the "third discoverer of Cuba."

The Ortizian tribute shared by the composer and the performer is far from being a voluntarist act: for both of them, the practice of all music within the island's realm, including concert music in its most elaborate forms, would have to revere as a reference point the legacy of the intellectual who in the past century unraveled the threads of the process of forging and consolidating Cuban identity, placed its components in their proper place, and vindicated the enormous debt to Africa.

Guerra's musical thought (Havana, 1973) reveals its full maturity with Sonata no. 1 (2013), not gratuitously subtitled Twenty-first Century, insofar as it assumes an updated vision of how to approach one of the great forms for solo instruments, consecrated by classical and romantic Western tradition.

Each movement possesses robust and demanding thematic developments for the performer. One observes in the composer a technical and emotional intelligence, in equal measure, capable of channeling the tensions between the heritage of the approaches of the piano technique of a Prokófiev, a Scriabin and a Bartók, and the bold harmonic and structural advances of the last half century.

The result is a language original in its complexity, bold in its proposal and rewarding in its communicative power. In one of the passages of the third movement, Guerra reveals the keys to his cultural origin, by emphasizing the African rhythmic lineage, which leads toward stations close to nineteenth-century creole piano. A promising result that does not catch the listener off guard, given the antecedents of Guerra and Madrigal.

When the voters of the Latin Recording Academy in 2012 had before them the album Elizabeth Reboso Live in LA, they did not hesitate to grant the Latin Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Work to Seduction. I am confident that, beyond its impeccable and tight formal conception, its evocative relief, demonstrated by Marcos Madrigal in the new recording, tipped the scales.

The delivery is completed by El batey (2009), a suite of six pieces in the manner of sketches –El tostao, El dulcero, El wititío dormido, El saltarín, La criollista and El babalao– which in one way or another echo procedures and languages dear to Cuban piano from the nineteenth century to timba tumbos, but bringing them to their own sensibility and inventiveness.

It is no accident that the scores were incorporated by Marcos Madrigal. Beyond the fact that they have been working together for some time, the interpretive virtues of the Cuban pianist are in full maturity, to the point that today he is one of the most prominent representatives of our school on an international scale. His positioning is grounded in the broad palette of his technical-expressive possibilities, thorough analysis of the repertoire, and the state of grace that emanates from both his studio recordings and his recitals and concerts.

As the journey of Yalil Guerra Piano Music Marcos Madrigal begins through the most important international distribution platforms, both are preparing a special presentation for the Cuban audience in the programming of cmbf, Radio Musical Nacional. One should pay attention. Cuban piano grows.