ON A RECENT visit to her house always filled with the sound of music, this writer found Ingrid Sala Santamaria going over the slow movement of Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto.
Through this adagio movement, she said she recalled her earlier Beethoven connections, which started in the early 1960s when she played the “Waldstein” sonata after winning the national piano competition sponsored by Jeunesses Musical Philippines.
She remembered accepting later a last-minute invitation to play the “Emperor” concerto on a mere one-month notice—on March 20, 1962, with the National Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Redentor Romero.
“When I accepted and started work right away, I realized that I could easily learn, memorize and perform major works on short notice,” she said.
“I was in my 20s in the ’60s, and I would consider this decade as a continuing development of my art and craft, combining invitational major performances with coaching lessons from our musical elders at that time.”
The decade was an interesting chapter in her personal and musical life. She was newly married then (to advertising executive Joe Santamaria) and starting a young family.
This was the decade she was studying under professor Josef Raiff at Juilliard, and professor Aida Gonzalez Sanz in Santa Isabel College.
It was also the same decade she had coaching lessons from the eminent piano pedagogue Benjamin Tupaz, who had just returned from London where he took lessons from Dame Myra Hess, a favorite pupil of Tobias Mathay.
“The big thing that professor Tupaz espoused was the use of arm weight in playing the piano,” Santamaria said. “That became a life-long principle, which to me was simply unforgettable.”
She has since then played the “Emperor” concerto many times over with various conductors from Romero to Luis Valencia, and now with Arturo Molina and the Manila Symphony Orchestra on June 9, at the Solaire Theater.
Intense contrasts
The concerto has always been a challenge to perform.
“In almost anything one has to perform in our chosen genre and field, one has to deal with opposites, contrasts, relationships,” she said. “This is especially obvious in Beethoven’s ‘Emperor.’ There is the matter of projecting strength, grandeur, even imperiousness. Then the music’s moods change, and one has to turn lyrical, be tender, and even feel a heavenly, ethereal, floating quality, especially in the second movement.
Performing the ‘Emperor’ throughout the years makes me feel these contrasts more intensely. The challenge is to be internally committed to feeling and conveying these contrasts to our listeners.”
After close to five decades of playing the “Emperor” concerto, Santamaria defined the timeless appeal of the piece thus: “As an interpreter, I would say the magic of this concerto lies in the fact that it has all the elements of strength, pride, courage, introspectiveness, gaiety, tenderness, mysticism and communion with God, nature and humanity, if you will. It is heaven to be able to feel this emotion through one’s fingertips when sometimes one’s voice or handwriting may falter.”
The rest of the June program at Solaire includes Beethoven’s “Leonore” Overture, which MSO performed at its inaugural concert in 1926, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major.
Call 5235712; e-mail info@manilasymphony.