6/14: Music of Latin America

In this program, we hear a chamber-music dimension of Caminos del Inka, an imaginative multi-cultural and multi-media initiative conceived by the distinguished Peruvian-born conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya.

Propelled by his desire to share the variety and breadth of Latin-American music with audiences worldwide, Maestro Harth-Bedoya assembled music created in or inspired by the countries of the Inca Trail – Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, and part of Argentina – evoking the long-ago world of the Inca Empire. The conductor has frequently combined performances of this music with photos and films of the land and its people. The music of Caminos del Inka ranges from the colonial period – the 17th and 18th centuries – to the present day.

The program begins with music by a composer who has come to symbolize Argentinean music: Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992). Classically trained, a student in Paris of the renowned Nadia Boulanger, he never lost his passion for the song and dance of Argentina, the tango, and he turned it into a unique fusion of classical and popular sounds, delighting listeners in his homeland and around the world. Composed in 1985 originally for flute and guitar, L’histoire du Tango sums up the style’s evolution in four short movements. “Bordel 1900,” a somewhat tongue-in-cheek tribute to the houses where the music originated, is followed by “Café 1930,” evoking the element of song and its addition of emotional depth to the tango style. “Nightclub 1960” remembers the popularization of the tango in social settings, and finally, “Concert d’aujourd’hui” (Concert of Today) is a tribute to the contribution of Piazzolla himself, making tango into a distinct and highly sophisticated musical genre.

Baltasar Martinez y Compañon, bishop of Trujillo, Peru, in the 1780s, was interested in both the visual and the aural art of his diocese. A volume called Trujillo del Peru from 1783 contains watercolors and musical pieces the bishop collected; three pieces were transcribed for small orchestra by Miguel Harth-Bedoya under the title Collection of Vice-Royal Music, and are heard in this program in a duo arrangement. Vice-royal is a reference to the viceroy, the colonial official who presided over territories like Peru in the name of the king of Spain. The significance of Trujillo del Peru is that it preserves in written form music that had previously existed only as part of an oral tradition. “Baile de Danzantes” is translated as “Dance with Dancer,” and according to the original note, was to be performed “with pipe and drum.” “Baile del Chimo” came originally with an illustration showing male dancers with axes and handkerchiefs, accompanied by harp, lute, and violin. The lively finale, “Lanchas para Bailar,” is translated as “Boats to Dance.”