SEVILLA – SPAIN
Theater of La Maestranza
Young Interpreters Cycle
AN EXCELLENT PIANIST ****
Juan José Roldán
A young pianist from Madrid inaugurated the traditional cycle of the workshop that serves as a showcase for emerging artists.
It often happens that the artists invited by the Maestranza in this cycle of Young Performers, which at last this season is once again programming three concerts instead of the usual two in recent years, prepare their presentation thoroughly, with great dedication and sure than a good number of rehearsals, to the point that they bring the scores learned by heart. This has happened with Leo de María, who, judging by the theater’s website and the playbill, has changed his stage name in just a few days, from Leonel Morales Herrero to Leo de María, surely to dispense with the second surname without having to confused with his father, also a master pianist. It also happens that there is less public interested in these still unknown interpreters; a pity because they lose the enormous pleasure of discovery and freshness. If it also coincides with a period of great activity in the Maestranza, the result is a capacity as soulless as this time.
This did not seem to affect the performance of the pianist, who with an extensive resume behind him showed himself to be one of a kind, giving himself body and soul to a demanding and complicated program designed to demonstrate his technical and expressive virtues, which they were not few. He decided to break down the program strictly chronologically, starting with Schumann’s Humoreske suite, a whole succession of emotions, sometimes conflicting, in which the composer shows his frustration at Friedrich Wieck’s refusal to grant him the hand of his daughter Clara, and with which de María was so affectionate, for example in the beautiful opening melody, as vertiginous in its continuous scales and figurations, alternating liveliness and impetuousness with lyricism and sensitivity, with a controlled use of pedals and suspensions. The usual torrent of notes that usually characterize Liszt’s piano pieces ended with a very competent, passionate and dramatic version of Gounod’s Faust Waltz that Liszt adapted from the end of the first act and the love scene of the second of the opera namesake.
After an emotional and atmospheric interpretation of the lengthy Goya painting El amor y la muerte de Granados, distilling expressiveness and appearing very self-absorbed, he came to the end with a sensational La Valse de Ravel that he saved with tremendous grandeur and precise and transparent fingering, and in the one that knew how to combine sumptuousness and grandeur with mystery and decadence, appearing sensual and seductive and thus overcoming the tiring challenge that this page and all of the above entails. In the tips he included a colorful and very Malagueña de Lecuona style.
Monday, December 4th of 2018.
El Correo
STRONG PIANISM
José Amador Morales
The traditional cycle of the Teatro de la Maestranza dedicated to young performers has begun this season with the presence of Leo de María and will conclude shortly with two appointments by the pianist Álvaro Campos (with an interesting «all Debussy») as well as the SQ4 Quartet. Also known as Leonel Morales Herrero, Leo de María is the son of the Cuban pianist Leonel Morales, also present in the Manuel García Hall accompanied by Pedro Halffter, who has evidently guided his first steps as a soloist, although he currently follows the instructions of Pavel Gililov. .
On this occasion, although the program was extremely demanding, almost daring, and intense like few others, the small venue of the Sevillian theater presented a rather mediocre entrance. A pity because the recital undoubtedly provided a pleasant surprise given the courage and audacity of the Madrid pianist’s performance.
After addressing the public to inform about the modification of the program and readjusting it with a chronological order, a forceful –due to its sonority– and not at all light, Humoreske by Schumann, was the work with which Leo de María assumed the challenge of beginning the recital and that already It earned him, among others, the first prize in the latest edition of the El Ferrol piano competition. If it was a little new to him in the expression of the convulsive and romantic Schumannian inner world (“I have spent the whole week at the piano, composing, writing, laughing and crying, all at the same time.: you will find all this carefully written in my opus 20 », he came to write to Clara) and something formally academic, it was more by contrast because of what he later demonstrated. It was the case of the closing of the first part, with the convenient virtuoso debauchery in Fanz Liszt’s Faust Waltz, his brilliant paraphrase of the scene from the first act of Gounod’s opera Faust as well as with its extreme registers and dynamics, in which Leo de María showed off his important technique, not exempt from musicality.
The return of the break provided, however, the best of the evening. “I finally found my personality: I fell in love with the psychology of Goya and his palette” Enrique Granados once pointed out about his Goyescas, a piano work whose success led him to turn it into an opera that would be premiered at the Metropolitan in New York itself and on whose return he would drown trying to save his beloved Amparo. Precisely palette –in this case piano- and a subtle sense of color De María did not lack in Love and death of the Catalan composer, giving the piece a wise castizo flavor within a careful emotional sobriety. But what was truly extraordinary came with an expressive high-voltage La valse based on its successful chiaroscuro and diaphanous textures. With this score by Ravel, the twenty-three-year-old pianist finished off a recital to which he added two tips (among which he highlighted the famous Malagueña by Lecuona, here inevitably idiomatic) given the enthusiastic response of the public.
Monday, December 4th of 2018.
Codalario. La Revista de Música
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