A Premiere In More Ways Than One
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On April 29, 2021, I, along with many other students in MUS 130b, had the opportunity to see the premiere of Edwin Guevara Gutiérrez’s Ibero-American Landscapes in person in Crowder Hall. Apart from being a premiere, this was the first time I had seen an in-person performance since March of 2020, so I was greatly looking forward to seeing the performance.
When I first entered Crowder Hall on the day of the premiere, I immediately saw many of my classmates sitting in the back. I recognized a few people from Zoom, but I had not seen many of these people before. I was seeing most of these people for the first time because a lot of my classmates left their cameras off, as did I. I chose to sit by myself because it had been hard to socialize while everything was remote, and I hadn’t gotten to know anyone. It was unclear to me whether we were sitting so far back because we had to be behind the camera or because we had to be distanced from the performers. As a consequence of the way that we sat, the hall felt quiet and empty, yet there was still a collective feeling of anticipation. As we sat in the back of the hall, I got the sense that things were finally returning to a pre-pandemic normal. It will still be quite a while before we can call it normal, but I finally had the feeling that things were heading in the right direction.
Then I saw the performers. There was Diana Schaible playing flute, Cecilia Palma playing cello, and Misael Barraza-Díaz and Edwin Guevara Gutiérrez playing guitar. The first thing that I noticed when I saw the performers was how distanced they were. When I attended rehearsals for the Arizona Symphony in Crowder Hall, we had to be distanced by what I believe was eight feet, so I assume the performers were at least that far apart. In my experience, performing at that great of a distance from other people is a real challenge, however, the Tucson Ibero-American Quartet made it look easy.
Before the premiere, we got to watch the quartet rehearse one last time. It was hard for me to tell exactly which details they were working out, but they did spend quite a while figuring out the exact percussive sounds they wanted on the guitar and cello. This discussion happened between Edwin Guevara Guevara and Cecilia Palma, whose parts in the Zamba Argentina called for percussion. The rehearsal lasted around 30 minutes and then the quartet went off stage while Dr. Mugmon said a few words about the premiere. Then it came time for the performance to start.
The performance was outstanding. I once again knew what it felt like to feel a hall fill with music. What stood out to me the most in Ibero-American Landscapes were the beautiful melodies that were passed between the flute and cello throughout the piece. One of my favorite examples of this is in the Brazilian Baiao section of the piece, which starts at 48:43 in the recording of the premiere. The flute gets the melody in the beginning while the two guitars and cello provide stay in the background to provide rhythmic stability. Soon after, the flute and cello switch roles. The flute joins the guitars with a more percussive part for rhythmic stability while the cello picks up where the flute left off with the melody. The flute and cello continue to pass the melody back and forth until the Argentine and Uruguayan Milonga begins.
The instrumentation of this piece was the most interesting aspect to me. The Venezuelan Merengue at 43:35 gave every instrument a moment to shine. The Merengue starts with one guitar, and every two measures, another person is added. The two guitars play in contrary conjunct motion and when the flute and cello come in, they have similar parts. This builds up to an intense percussive section that ends with a lively melody in the flute. Throughout the Merengue, the flute and cello pass the melody back and forth as they do in most of the rest of the piece, but there are moments when one of the guitars plays along with the flute.
The Brazilian Baiao and Venezuelan Merengue are the two parts of the piece that I enjoy the most, however, the piece has many more strikingly beautiful moments. As I mentioned earlier, the instrumentation of this piece allows for there to be extremely bright and lively moments as well as more intense and percussive moments. The uniqueness of the instrumentation reminds me of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, in which Berlioz wanted many more instruments than would be expected in a typical symphony. Of course, the instrumentation of Ibero-American Landscapes was not nearly as controversial as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
This premiere reminded me of several of the premieres that we studied this semester because the in-person component of this premiere was not guaranteed. There was similar uncertainty in the premieres of Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Symphony №9, and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. For Handel’s Messiah, there was a question as to whether the musicians would be allowed to perform, and Beethoven and Berlioz both had trouble finding concert halls to hold their premieres. Despite the uncertainty of all these premieres, it is fortunate that they were the successes they were.
