LOVE LETTERS FROM HOME / RAUL SUNICO Piano Recital / Review

LOVE LETTERS FROM HOME

RAUL SUNICO Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Monday (3 June 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 June 2019 with the title "Filipino pianist delights with country's favourites".

Hot on the heels of the Singapore International Piano Festival was yet another piano festival, called Pioneering Pianists of Southeast Asia. Organised by Steinway & Sons, this showcased two keyboard veterans, Raul Sunico (Philippines) and Nat Yontararak (Thailand), who have contributed significantly to piano-playing cultures of their respective nations.

On the first evening, Sunico, who also has degrees in mathematics and statistics, performed a selection of popular classics and transcriptions of well-known Filipino songs. The first segment showed he still has the wherewithal to master two of Rachmaninov’s Preludes. Opening with the infamous C sharp minor Prelude (Op.3 No.2), its chord-filled pages resounded like the carillons of Moscow, while the G sharp minor number (Op.32 No.12) was filled with requisite melancholy.

He was less successful in Chopin’s Nocturne in B major (Op.9 No.3), where the stormy central section was hurried and messy. He however redeemed himself in Albeniz’s El Puerto (from Iberia) where its tricky rhythms were en pointe, and throes of passion built up to a crashing climax in the Liszt transcription of Wagner’s Liebestod (from the opera Tristan und Isolde). No concessions were needed for the fact that Sunico is 71 this year.

Attired in the traditional Barong Tagalog, Sunico ruled the stage in seven Filipino song transcriptions, three originals and four by his own hand. Totally at ease in this idiom, this was easily the most memorable part of the evening.

Some pieces had clear references to popular classics, such as Mike Verlade’s Buhat (Since) which opened with the left hand accompaniment to Debussy’s Reverie, while Ernani Cuenco’s Bato Sa Buhangin (Stone On Sand) masqueraded as Chopin’s ubiquitous E flat major Nocturne in its first bar. Nicano Abelardo’s Nocturne in C sharp minor was a dead-ringer for Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu, also in the same key.

This was not plagiarism as the pieces immediately developed and gained a life of their own. Much of the glorious melodies could have come from the pens of Richard Rodgers, the Sherman brothers and a slew of Hollywood/Broadway composers, such were their popular appeal. The harmonies were deliciously sweet-toothed, and one imagined a Gershwin or Mayerl having a hand.

Felipe de Leon’s Kundiman was a bittersweet love song. Francisco Buencamino’s Kumintang, a minor key romance in the form of a waltz, while Celeste Legaspi-Gallardo’s Saranggola Ni Pepe was a fast jazzy dance with deeper patriotic leanings, although not obviously apparent. All these had tastefully varied ornamentations, and performed with much love and pride.

There was even a sales pitch for Steinway’s Spirio R, a modern playback mechanism like a player-piano fitted on a concert grand. Sunico thus accompanied himself, playing on two pianos Milhaud’s Brasileira (from Scaramouche) and a welcome reprise of Saranggola Ni Pepe.

The closing work of the 80 minute recital without intermission was Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue, in a no-holds-barred reading that had all the bells, whistles and augmentations. Sunico accompanied in two encores with master-of-ceremony Cristina Villonco who sang, to much enjoyment for the Pinoys in the audience.