Tchaikovsky as never heard before. Licad with the PPO
Photos by Kiko Cabuena
“Bakit siya napakagaling? Tayo, magaganda lang (Why is she so good? Whereas, we’re only pretty)”—actor-scriptwriter-director Bibeth Orteza to friends at the end of ‘Cecile Licad at the Met, a women’s month invitational concert.
Standing ovation for Licad at the Metropolitan Theater
Licad wore the nerdiest eyeglasses, white socks, matching white gala shoes and a white mini dress, her undie almost peeking as she took her bow. This was in June 1973. That was when I first heard the pianist play in the freshman orientation program of the University of the Philippines. Then UP President Salvador P. Lopez led the standing ovation for this mere child who played with such aplomb and confidence, with the university orchestra under Prof. Regalado Jose.
The image of that chubby girl morphed through the years as she shed the layers of baby fat and became the lean mean fighting machine that she is today. Just last March 19, two months shy of her 63rd year, Licad emerged from the dark wings of the restored Metropolitan Theater alongside Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO) conductor Grzegorz Nowak who raised her hand like a boxing referee, proclaiming non-verbally to Tuesday night audience, “Here’s your champ!” The gesture is quite telling—it were as though the maestro was giving her back to the Filipinos after almost a year’s absence. (She was last here for the American Ballet Theater’s dance-piano multi-city performances in April 2023.)
Applause, cheers and wolf whistles erupted as the figure of Licad, clad in a long sleek black dress by Aidan Mattox, walked towards the newly tuned Fazioli grand borrowed from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) for the evening’s piece de resistance, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 23, B-flat minor. Earlier, the PPO played Brahms’ thoughtful Symphony No. 2, Op. 73, D major.
By the time Licad pounded the opening chords of the first movement, Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso–Allegro con spirito, my seatmate, no less than favorite Marxist royalty and perennial concert-goer, Princess R. Nemenzo, gestured broadly with her arms and swayed her upper body as though she were the maestro leading the orchestra. I always enjoy a concert where members of the audience are so moved by what they’re hearing that they spontaneously do something physical with their bodies to move in time with the music.
Columnist Randy David flanked by Tariman and grandson Emman Acosta who was celebrating his 21st birthday the night of the concert
Let the critics and reviewers write reams or post more knowledgeable commentaries about Licad’s latest performance and exhaust the superlative adjectives in this borrowed language. Enough for me to draw on memories of having once seen children running up to Licad, after an outreach concert in the Science City of Muñoz, and pinching her cheeks to check if she’s for real. Or the same children clambering up the piano stool and, with their forefingers, trying out the Bosendorfer, prompting concert organizer Pablo Tariman to tsk tsk and quip, “Don’t touch my Bosendorfer!”
And even if an audience of mainly farmers, students, government employees and rural folk clapped in between movements of a symphony, also witnessed on another occasion in Muñoz, Licad turned to them, graciously beamed a full smile to show she appreciated their applause before she continued her work.
For music has been her life’s work and passion. She has known nothing but it. As the late filmmaker and Licad’s bosom buddy Marilou Diaz-Abaya once said of Rosario and Jesus Licad, the pianist’s parents, they practically offered their only daughter on the altar of music, to the patron saint of music Cecilia.
That sort of passion is what spins the world, and lovers and/or husbands are left by the wayside.
The pianist once told her mother after her marriage broke up and she was still able to give her all in a concert in Bonn, Germany, “I just realized, Mama, that I don’t need a husband. I need only my music and my son Otavio.”
So it is really a treat in March, declared internationally as Women’s History Month, that Licad should be our exemplar in terms of professional commitment and dedication, the kind that elevates craft to artistry. And from artistry ever upwards to greatness and glory.
From the get-go, Licad’s main concern was there would be a good piano available, never mind if it meant it would travel from one end of Roxas Blvd. (the CCP) to the other end on Padre Burgos Ave., Ermita Manila. Fierce communications ensued to make this possible. The piano had to produce the ideal bouncy sounds the pianist sought.
As a communicator, she wanted Tchaikovsky’s message, telegraphed in three movements by the PPO and her piano, to reach the audience all the way to the farthest end of the balcony.
Next she was bothered by what seemed like unnecessary curtains backstage that were absorbing the sounds of the piano. These were removed. Thanks to the support of businessman Anton T. Huang, the son of the late PPO Society head Nedy R. Tantoco who was also Licad’s friend, the problematic acoustics of the Met was improved upon with the almost overnight building and attachment of an acoustic plywood shell onstage. The shell was turned over to the other concert sponsor, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, for future use.
The woman gets things done for the betterment of the listening public, even if that public may just be the lucky hundreds who filled the orchestra section based on strict QR codes. Lord, those codes proved to be a nightmare for some of the organizing staff. Perhaps, in the next invitational event, a simple list of guests will do. At least two senior citizens asked me for help in how to look for their QRs in their smart phones. Bar codes may be the norm, may increasingly be the wave of the future, but a ticket or physical list is better for some like Mr. Tariman.
Pre-concert cocktails were heavy, enough to tide over the audience after the hour-long concert that started promptly at 7 p.m. Via Mare was the caterer of the hour with its Lenten pica pica of fish katsu sandwiches, chicken-gambas empanaditas, fish cakes with sweet chili, mini fried lumpiang ubod, penne puttanesca, mango cheesecake bites, and burnt sugarcake. There was wine, there was iced tea.
The recently departed Ms. Tantoco would’ve approved and would’ve been further pleased with Schumann’s Dedication played by Licad as encore in her memory.
What’s a Licad concert without another composition by her grand-uncle, Francisco Buencamino, Hibik ng Puso? As an aside, she said her lolo used to play the piano for silent movies that ran in the old, pre-war Metropolitan Theater. The audience wouldn’t let her go so she obliged with a third encore, Chopin’s Minute Waltz, the waltz that a music connoisseur said doesn’t even last a minute long. In her hands, it was brisk indeed, refreshing and playful. As all good things on this earth must be.
Dressed to the nines, among them Mimi Sison, Ivi Avellana Cosio, Sarah Sison, Pablo Tariman, and Anna Leah Sarabia
