Niurka González Núñez. The album Habana_París: A Stop Along the Way

June 4, 2018

More often than we would like, we find ourselves meditating on where modernity intends to take us, specifically regarding cutting-edge technology for listening to music. It is as if there were a preconceived intention not to allow zones of silence in our daily lives. If you take a taxi, music almost always accompanies you, just as it does on any urban or interprovincial bus. If you are in a line to enter the Coppelia ice cream parlor, surely someone is enjoying their ability to listen to music, but at a volume accessible not only to them, but to all of us keeping them company. Even if you visit a friend's house, the most likely scenario is that they will play some music to set the mood for the occasion; for the same purpose, in certain workplaces there are speakers for listening to music. Of course, in this tally of music generators we encounter daily, we cannot overlook those who go out into the street wearing headphones as large as hats.

The most lamentable thing is not only the real possibility of verifying that modernity wants to make us believe what we could miss if music does not accompany us practically in all our acts; but that a certain type of this music that is heard so much despite its decadent nature, we should name it differently. In that sense, the parameters used to praise the supposed conditions of anyone's ability to make music have been relaxed. To decide to recognize in someone a lack of talent and their professional inability to evoke the muses of musical art has been reduced to something that could well be considered merely as an assessment of our personal opinion, nothing more.

Amid bitter musings about how the market has managed to tip the scales in its favor through its ability to deceive us about what really has questionable quality as if it were something exceptional in the universe of contemporary music, we are surprised in the Cuban cultural sphere by a recording that forces us to pause. I speak of the CD Habana-París by Dúo Ondina (Ojalá 2017), a production whose aesthetic reach goes far beyond an excellent proposal of chamber music. With over 20 years of continuous effort, Dúo Ondina, formed by flutist Niurka González Núñez and pianist María del Henar Navarro, has managed to mold in this recording project an entire sonic landscape that refers us to the primordial value of the beauty of music for the human being. From the first piece, titled Fantasía, by Philippe Gaubert to the closing with Preludio y Scherzo, by Henri Busser, we are moved by the discovery of an authentic inspiration that stirs truths that persist in our deepest inner being.

Enjoying Niurka's interpretations on the flute is like contemplating the song of birds in an enchanted forest where nothing foreign can interrupt the preaching of the stream except for the cheerful bustle of children, a sensation that at times María conveys to us from the piano keys. It is a reunion with the essences of a culture forged by the authority of virtuosity that invites us to dream awake with the privilege of existing.

Furthermore, in Niurka González's decision to pay homage to the French flute school that marks her training as a professional, the presence in the recording of Gallic masters from the early twentieth century is influential, with pieces that reflect the spirit of an era alien to the circumstantial transitions of our time; pretexts that allow us to strip music of the purely spiritual foundation that makes it a supreme artistic expression. Finally, if specialized criticism expresses itself about Cuban Roberto Ondina in the laudatory terms that correspond to a flutist they considered a genius, the duo that bears his name simply constitutes a living monument that honors him from the height of the prestigious master's legacy.

By: Guille Vilar
Source: La Jiribilla
Available at: https://www.lajiribilla.cu/articulo/el-disco-habana-paris-un-alto-en-el-camino