New record confirms the achievements of Cuban Yalil Guerra

June 25, 2018

In its continuous endeavor to disseminate contemporary creation in the music of the American continent, the string ensemble La Catrina has just released its recording of String Quartet No. 3, composed by Cuban Yalil Guerra.

This is a second collaboration between the also producer and the ensemble, which in 2014 received a Latin Grammy nomination in the Best Classical Work category for the performance of String Quartet No. 2, included in the album América Latina: A Musical canvas.

The new realization intertwines the interpretive mastery that identifies the Chilean-Venezuelan-Mexican quartet of US residence and the singular concept contributed by the author, based on the Grosse Fuge, Opus 133, by Ludwig van Beethoven.

In such a way, the recording, licensed by Rycy Productions, directs interest toward the flow achieved by the musicians and the commitment to which Guerra subordinated himself, in order to conceive this single movement.

Betting on its inclusion in the next edition of the Latin Grammy Awards, the new production of the label (winner on two occasions of the competition and nominated on twelve occasions for the same trophy), evidences the sound complexity proposed by the award-winning Havana composer, from an academic dissection as rich as exquisite when exploring the "Beethovenian style" through the excellent performance of La Catrina.

In this String Quartet No. 3 we can find a Yalil attentive to the universality contributed by the Genius of Bonn, to develop and expand the motif that identifies the original piece, but at the same time immersed in an evident fluidity of antecedents.

Mature in his compositional credit, the author confirms the assimilation of contemporary referents, making use of an original bitonal and polytonal language at times, which accompany the aforementioned leitmotiv; while other segments present entirely tonal melodies, using syncopation as a unifying rhythmic element throughout the work.

But where the original discourse contributed achieves greater notoriety is in the coda; achieving that the evidences of the contemporary sonority with which he dresses the work of the German, are subordinated to the Cuban notoriety that is proper to it.

Rhythms of the greatest of the Antilles transformed, interpreted by the viola and cello while the two violins continue developing the melodic motifs, advance toward the end of Yalil Guerra's String Quartet No. 3, clearing the influential criteria.

In such a way, this new work recorded by La Catrina involves us even more in the compositional style of the proven musician of the Island; in no way fragmented, and clearly evident of the path through which his musical criterion discourses, so abundant in flows of diverse roots; which he has nourished with his original forms.