Huberal's 90th Birthday

May 17, 2019

The outstanding pianist Huberal Herrera will celebrate his 90 years of age at the Basílica Menor de San Francisco de Asís.

Huberal Herrera will celebrate himself. Perhaps it would have been better if others had supported him in his celebration, and indeed, that will surely happen when the exact day arrives, May 28, to complete his 90 years of age. He has wanted to get ahead and give more than be given. He will do so next Saturday the 18th, at 6:00 p.m., at the Basílica Menor de San Francisco. It will probably be to confirm that he is in peak form and still has much more to deliver from the piano.

On that occasion, the names of Hortensia Rojas, Arcadio Menocal, and the very dear Argeliers León and Harold Gramatges will pass through his memory, decisive in his training and precursors of a path that would lead him to perfect the technique of the instrument with Katia Kazandjeva, Stanislav Pochekin, and Joseph Goorevich, with which he definitively left behind the title of lawyer specialized in Administrative Law.

From then on and henceforth, Huberal would establish his identity as one of the most industrious and consistent piano interpreters in our country, with sufficient merits to make himself known beyond the limits of the Island.

His repertoire includes works from European Romanticism, Latin American nationalisms, and authors of twentieth-century avant-gardes, but his fervor is directed again and again toward the assessment and promotion of the enormous piano legacy of Ernesto Lecuona.

In Spain, he recorded for the first time in the world the complete catalog of Lecuona's works for piano, contained in a triple album produced by the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE).

Less than a year ago, the production company Octavio Cortázar, of the Uneac, premiered the documentary Huberal, by José Galiño. That day, maestro Juan Piñera, after expressing pride in having shared creative spaces with Huberal, evoked the participation of the honoree in the musical evenings of the Sociedad Nuestro Tiempo, a nucleus of cultural resistance in the midst of the Batista dictatorship, and his defense of the work of Harold Gramatges, Juan Blanco, and the very young Carlos Fariñas and Héctor Angulo. "That is to say," he emphasized, "what would be the vanguard of musical thought after the triumph of the Revolution was present in Huberal, who had the courage to interpret that music."

(Source: Granma)