It was 1970, and I had yet to hear live classical music.
At the Manuel L. Quezon University along Hidalgo St. where I took up journalism, I would often hear an orchestra in rehearsal during what we called “vacant periods.”
I had always wondered why that street looked like remnants of an old town. From what I’ve read so far, Hidalgo St. in Quiapo was the most beautiful street in its time from the 1800s to the 1900s. An account by Ma. Patricia Brillantes-Silvestre revealed that the introduction of opera and Spanish and Filipino zarzuelas happened in this Quiapo district.
The documented theaters in the early years were the Teatro Lírico (1839), Teatro de Tondo (1841), Teatro Español (1846), and Teatro del Principe Alfonso (1862). Others followed, like the Teatro de Variedades (1880), Circo Teatro de Bilibid (1870), Teatro Filipino (1880), and Teatro Popular (1893).
Silvestre noted that the private houses along Hidalgo Street played a vital role in the preservation and nurturing of classical music. This was chamber music staged by music societies in the early days, with “music lovers filling the azotea (balcony), the kitchen and stairway, the late customers standing or squatting just to be able to listen to what the group called ‘musica Filipina’”
The illustrious Quiapo families were the Aranetas, Legardas, Tuazons, and Nakpils, who opened their doors to evening concerts, balls, and other informal occasions for music making.
That time in 1970, I traced the source of that live music—it came from what I presumed was an old house of the Legardas just a few doors away from the university. The sound was magical, but at that time, I didn’t know anything about classical music. I was fascinated by it. I was acting on pure instinct without knowing what it was.
At 72, after more than 45 years of covering music performances, I need only a few bars to know what the music is, and who is its composer.
In the late ’60s, my source of free classical music was the Thomas Jefferson Library in Sta. Mesa, where you could listen to vinyl recordings or actually borrow them.
Come to think of it, my first live orchestra experience in a formal setting was Cecile Licad at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), playing with the CCP orchestra (later renamed Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra) in an evening of three concertos in 1975.
I guess it was in 1979, also at the CCP, that I heard the Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO) with soprano Montserrat Caballe as soloist. She later moved to the Manila Metropolitan Theater for a solo recital.
It was then that I learned the MSO was the oldest orchestra in the country and probably in Southeast Asia. Founded in 1926 by Alexander Lippay, the MSO was in its dying days when I would watch its performances at Manila Metropolitan Theater; this would be from the late ’80s to the early ’90s. Herbert Zipper was trying to revive it. But with the emergence of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra and other smaller orchestra ensembles, reviving the MSO seemed impossible then.
Herbert Zipper in the ‘80s (From Pablo Tariman files)
The MSO under Zipper last performed at the Met in the late ’80s. I was appointed by then Met executive director Conchita Sunico as orchestra manager to assist in what turned out to be the last MSO concert at the Met.
What was providential was that I “debuted” as impresario at the Met in 1984 with the MSO under Sergio Esmilla, Jr., and with soprano Nelly Miricioiu as its distinguished soloist.
The first Met concert of Nelly Miricioiu took off with flying colors in August 1984…Critic Rosalinda Orosa described the soprano as a ‘gift of the Gods’
When you have no funds as impresario, you tap people who can help. Tita Conching (Sunico) provided the venue and the orchestra. Lawyer Honorio Poblador helped fly in and hosted the Romanian soprano.
With me as coordinator, the first Met concert of La Miricioiu took off with flying colors in August 1984. It was the talk of the town for weeks. Critic Rosalinda Orosa described the soprano as a “gift of the Gods.”
It was after that the MSO took a temporary respite, in the late ’90s. In 2001, long-time MSO concertmaster and soloist Basilio Manalo revived the orchestra with younger members. Arturo Molina took over as resident conductor, and it featured good guest conductors like Daryl Ang, among others.
Then the pandemic cut short its music-making in 2020. It continued with so-called “virtual” concerts streamed on FB. But of course, there was nothing like a live concert.
Although the MSO was founded in 1926 and made its debut in the old and original Manila Grand Opera House, its most talked-about concert was on May 10-11, 1945, right after the war that saw death and destruction in Manila.
That historic concert happened exactly 76 years ago, three years before I was born, in the ruins of Sta. Cruz church.
What did Manila in 1945 look like after the war? It was also called the Holocaust of 1945 because of many horror stories. That year, members of Manila’s prominent families became victims of war-time massacre, among them the Lims (Vicente), the Escodas (Josefa Llanes Escoda, mother of former CCP president Bing Roxas), the Quirinos, the Syquias, the Del Mundos, and the Colaycos.
Fleeing the Japanese marauders, the then young wife Carmen Guerrero Nakpil ended up in the Luzuriaga house along Taft Avenue, where toddlers, her daughter Gemma Cruz and Peque Gallaga, temporarily shared a crib.
But to Manila’s music world, 1945 was also the year the first celebrated Filipino violin prodigy, Ernesto Vallejo, met his untimely death at the hands of the Japanese invaders.
Born in Manila on December 19, 1909, Vallejo started his musical training under his parents. His father, Jose Vallejo of Ilocos, was himself a violinist, and was, for a long time, leader of the Army and Navy Club Orchestra. His mother, Feliza Arriola of mixed Visayan/Capiz and Tagalog roots, was a skilled harpist. The sixth in the brood of 12, Ernesto had three brothers who played the piano, while a sister was an accomplished singer. (Fely Vallejo became an actress and was married to Filipino film director Gerry de Leon.)
Vallejo finished his elementary schooling at Santa Cruz Primary School, and from there, went to Mabini Intermediate School and later to Manila North High School. He would be presented always in music programs in schools and was also featured at the Zorrilla Theater, the Army and Navy Club, and at the Columbia Club, not only as violinist, but also on classical guitar, an instrument he also mastered.
To Manila’s music world, 1945 was also the year the first celebrated Filipino violin prodigy, Ernesto Vallejo, met his untimely death at the hands of the Japanese invaders
His talent was soon noticed by the music teachers of that era, like Prof. Marcelo Adonay and Prof. Bonifacio Abdon. With the latter, he studied the violin under the auspices of the Asociacion Musical de Filipinas. Fondly called “Vallejito” by his peers due to his short stature, he would impress visiting renowned artists who came to see his immense native talent.
Mishel Piastro, one-time concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, heard Vallejo play in Manila when he was only 13 and said: “It is a crime that this child should continue here longer. Of the 11 million Filipinos, I am sure there is only one Vallejo. What is more, I doubt that in the entire Malay race, he has his equal. No time should be lost in sending young Vallejo to the United States. To fail to do so would be to lose a genius who will bring honor to the Philippines.”
With the help of Filipino philanthropist and art patron Dr. Ariston Bautista Lin, the Philippine government granted Vallejo a scholarship. In October 1923 at age 14, he left the country as a pensionado and remained in the US for six years.
Vallejo studied under renowned American violinist Franz Kneisel while also continuing his high school education at Riverside Country School, New York. Vallejo related that when Kneisel saw him play and listened to him for the first time, he immediately took him into his class instead of assigning him to one of his assistant teachers. Vallejo then related: “He told me not to be offended, but my bowing was all wrong, and that the secret of the great violinist lies in the bowing. He made me practice one bar for two weeks to two months, over and over again. Every moment in the bowing and fingering had to be perfect. I practiced seven hours a day. But everything went smoothly, and only a year afterward, I made my debut at Palm Beach.”
When Franz Kneisel died in 1926, Vallejo continued his violin study under Sacha Jacobsen, a pupil of Kneisel. For his graduation concert in March 1929, Vallejo was presented at Town Hall, New York. He performed Edouard Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole and Brahms’ Sonata in A major.
For the record, Vallejo was the first Filipino violin soloist of the MSO. If piano prodigy Cecile Licad, at age 11, impressed Van Cliburn, Vallejo at age 12 impressed no less than the great Russian violinist Mischa Ellman when the latter visited Manila in 1921. It was Ellman himself who suggested that Vallejo be given the chance to study abroad.
The young Vallejo was not just an exceptionally talented violinist, but also a Renaissance man, probably in the mold of Jose Rizal. He also studied the piano, became proficient in French, and excelled in tennis and swimming at the same time.
After only three years of violin studies in the US, he held his first series of concerts in Florida, Ohio, Washington D.C., and Boston, among others. After one such concert, an admirer gifted him with a 200-year-old Ferdinand Dondolfi violin, costing $10,000 in the late 1920s. Another admirer, this time a widow from California, also gifted him with a violin worth $2,000 after one such performance.
Also for the record, Vallejo was the first violinist to debut at the New York’s Town Hall to great acclaim. He was also the first Filipino to give a command performance for then US President Calvin Coolidge at the White House and for General Douglas MacArthur, with whom Vallejo stayed for two weeks at the latter’s Stotsenberg Estate in Philadelphia.
Among the reviews of Vallejo’s performances which came out in US papers was one written by Noel Strauss in the March 15, 1929 issue of Evening World. It said: “Although many violinists have tried their hands at the overworked Sonata in A Major of Brahms during this season, it remained for Ernesto Vallejo, an 18-year-old Filipino boy from Manila, to give a completely adequate interpretation of the work.”
Carmita Legarda, who witnessed first-hand the performances of Vallejo with the MSO before the war, wrote: “Vallejo’s great artistry and commanding presence, despite his diminutive size, always proved a drawing card whenever he was soloist, and his level of musicianship helped to mold the MSO to achieve a standard of musical excellence and maturity.”
Among the noted pupils of Vallejo were violinist-turned-conductor Redentor Romero and Basilio Manalo.
On February 10, 1945, the retreating Japanese Marine Corps in Tanauan town killed scores of innocent civilians, among them Vallejo, his wife, and three children
In September 1929, Vallejo returned to Manila and did a homecoming concert at the Manila Grand Opera House. Dr. Alexander Lippay, MSO founder, described Vallejo’s genius thus: “He plays everything with soul and his interpretation is always intelligent. His tone and modulation are beautiful, and his bowing technique masterful. There is no question about his talent. Although only 20 years old, he plays with the maturity of a man of 40. It is phenomenal!”
Where was Vallejo in the last two years before the Holocaust of 1945? As early as 1944, Vallejo found it hard to survive in Manila. One of the pupils of Vallejo was Redentor Romero, who recalled that living in Manila during that year was pure hell. The prices of staple food rose, the looters multiplied, and suspected guerrillas and innocent civilians were being tortured, among them Romero’s brother.
For this reason, Vallejo accepted the invitation of a wealthy family friend, Manuel Gonzalez, to evacuate to Tanauan, Batangas. His cherished possessions then were his four expensive violins and lots of musical pieces.
Before the holocaust, there were regular concerts in the Tanauan house where Vallejo lived in 1944. Japanese officers were seen in some of those concerts.
But on the night of February 9, 1945, a messenger from the guerrilla forces warned them that the Japanese command based in Batangas had received orders that all civilians left in the town would be massacred and their houses burned.
For a while, the Vallejos thought that since they had befriended some Japanese officers during those house concerts, they would be spared. The next day, February 10, 1945, the retreating Japanese Marine Corps in Tanauan town killed scores of innocent civilians, among them Vallejo, his wife, and three children.
Their house was burned along with priceless music scores and their expensive violins.
Nor surprising at all was that a few arrived in time for rehearsals in tattered clothes, ‘burnt by the sun and ravaged by hunger’
Someone on FB asked: Was that April 10,1945 concert in the ruins of Sta. Cruz church necessary when the country was still reeling from the horrors of war?
In the MSO archives, the picture that emerged of that concert was indeed heroic. The musicians who heeded the call of Zipper to join the MSO’s first concert after the Liberation of Manila in 1945 came from different parts of the country, and were still recovering from the pillage of war. Some musicians were former guerillas and war prisoners.
Elizabeth Lolarga, in an interview with MSO director Jeffrey Solares, recounted how some musicians who volunteered to play emerged from the dungeons of Fort Santiago, still others from the University of Santo Tomas internment camp. Not surprising at all was that a few arrived in time for the first rehearsals in tattered clothes, “burnt by the sun and ravaged by hunger.” Others died during the infamous Bataan March to Capas, Tarlac.
In his article A Necessary Concert? published May 9, 2021 in the Philippines on the Potomac (POPDC) Project, a society and culture website, author Erwin Tiongson wrote: “The head of the woodwinds section had been killed, too. Some ‘appeared too weak from malnutrition to play,’ according to an account by Kellie Brown.” It added that not one among the surviving members of the orchestra had played in years.
The same article quoted the late historian and economist Benito Legarda—the then younger conductor Zipper himself looked “emaciated over three years of (de) privation.” But Zipper was determined to mount a concert even in the smoke of war.
Tiongson’s article narrated how the rehearsals started in the first few days of April, and “they found instruments ‘miraculously salvaged from the fires.’ The US army provided food and clothes. Zipper ‘scoured the city’ collecting chairs for audience members. For several weeks, Zipper could be seen ‘tirelessly driving, begging, coaching, teaching.’”
The concert was the most unusual ever held in Manila. Booming sounds of machine gun and artillery fire could be heard in the distance
Tiongson’s story continued: “Finally, before an audience of about 2,400 in the middle of the ruins of the Santa Cruz Cathedral, the orchestra played.” The evening fare was Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (No. 3) and Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Dr. Legarda recalled the concert started at 7:20 on the night of April 10, 1945.
The concert was described in the Sunday Times Magazine in May 1970 as the most unusual ever held in Manila. At intervals, booming sounds of machine gun and artillery fire could be heard in the distance, coming from the direction of the mountainous areas around Novaliches, Antipolo, and Montalban.
Guests of honor included President and Mrs. Sergio Osmena, Mrs. Douglas MacArthur, and Mrs. Manuel A. Roxas.
A witness and musician in that 1945 concert was American clarinet player Earl Smith. In 2015, Smith (then age 92) was asking if a Filipino lady cellist named Consuelo Tagle was still around.
In the surface mail sent to MSO executive director Jeffrey Solares were pictures of MSO members in the 1940s and old souvenir programs. Smith wrote that he arrived in the Philippines in 1945 with the troops that landed in Lingayen Gulf. They were soon transported to a destination north of Manila and housed in a big building with artillery guns nearby, and where he could hear guns being fired all night long.
The army clarinet player recalled the night he arrived in Manila in April 1945: “The noise was incredible. And as each gun fired, the walls of the building could be seen to move in and out from the concussion. Not much sleep at night.”
A technical sergeant and a member of the 37th Infantry Division Band, and with occupational specialty labeled as “bandman, clarinet #432,” Smith was soon assigned to the division chaplain where he realized he had to secure music for various church services. He ended up in Sta. Cruz Church, where now National Artist for Music Antonio Molina—then the music director of the church—loaned him some music pieces.
Molina, also a cellist, was a granduncle of former MSO music director and conductor Arturo Molina and father of the late jazzman, journalist, and music critic Lito Molina.
The older Molina mentioned to the American clarinetist that the MSO was in rehearsal for a coming concert. Zipper, then MSO music director and conductor, allowed him to sit in the rehearsal. He soon found himself in the first chair of the clarinet section.
By way of introduction, Smith told Zipper he was a principal clarinetist of the Oakland (California) Symphony and the San Francisco National Youth Orchestra.
The joy of music once more engulfed Smith as they rehearsed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 and Dvorak’s New World. Zipper invited him to join the orchestra—at least for the May 10-11, 1945 concerts. But Smith had to remind Zipper that he was still working with the US Army and that the war was still going on.
The next thing he knew, he was mysteriously assigned to the headquarters of Gen. Douglas McArthur and the Manila Symphony!
Smith asked Zipper how he managed to get him assigned to the orchestra. Zipper replied, ‘Oh, I just invited General McArthur’s private secretary over for dinner last night!’
In the first rehearsal the following day, Smith asked Zipper how he managed to get him assigned to the orchestra. Zipper replied, probably with a grin: “Oh, I just invited General McArthur’s private secretary over for dinner last night!”
Smith still had vivid recollection of that historic 1945 concert. When the musicians arrived in the church, workmen were still putting finishing touches on the stage. “The performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 was going along just fine, when all of a sudden there was a loud explosion right behind me. If I didn’t believe in levitation before, I did now as I must have come off my chair six inches or more,” he recalled.
His first thought was, had the enemy returned? They found out later that the explosion was caused by a large light bulb that had gone loose and crashed on the stage.
He said later, “The explosion would have been more appropriate had we been playing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.”
Less than three months after that special 1945 engagement with MSO, clarinetist Smith was recalled back to the 37th Infantry Division Band for a possible invasion of Japan. “This was a very sad time, as I would have to leave my position in the orchestra and all of the friends I had made over the months. It was with sadness that our goodbyes were said. And thus ended an exciting period in my life,” Smith confided to the present MSO members.
In 2015 at Meralco Theater, the MSO recreated the 1945 concert with the same program played 76 years ago. The orchestra was supposed to mount a concert last year to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the post-Liberation concert in the ruins of Sta Cruz Church. But due to the pandemic, plans we cancelled.
If the life and times of the MSO were made into a movie, it would be a romantic blockbuster like Pearl Harbor, as engrossing as The Great Gatsby, and as gripping as Schindler’s List.
Its opening scenes would be Manila in the mid-20s, when TV sets were non-existent and the main sources of entertainment were recitals in exclusive girls schools and operas at the Manila Grand Opera House. Music lessons in most middle upper-class families were a must then.
The then young and not yet famous Nicanor Abelardo eked out a living by playing live music in movie houses on Avenida Rizal showing silent movies, and doing extra musical chores in a Sta. Ana cabaret (to the shock of his erstwhile rival, Francisco Santiago).
This film should have an opera highlight with President Quezon watching Bellini’s La Sonnambula at the Manila Grand Opera House, with MSO soloist Mercedes Matias Santiago in the lead soprano role. For the war scene, there should be an MSO concert at the Manila Metropolitan Theater under the watchful eyes of the Japanese soldiers, with pianists and violinists fleeing from Japanese marauders clutching their music scores on Liberation Day.
A moving finale should be another concert scene just after the war, when violinist Basilio Manalo was soloist in the Beethoven concerto, right in the ruins of Sta. Cruz Church.
These suggested movie highlights actually happened when music-making was at its purest in early years of the MSO. The late Redentor Romero recalled hearing the MSO in the late ’40s under Bernardino Custodio, with Yehudi Menuhin as soloist in the Mendelssohn concerto. Romero, who passed away in 2001, told me he was just in awe as he watched that 1948 MSO concert with Menuhin.
MSO soloist Reynaldo Reyes said the ’50s and the ’60s should be the golden age of music in Manila, because of the first-rate programming Manila’s music lovers got from the MSO.
Harpist Lourdes de Leon Gregorio, who opened the 1969 MSO season as soloist in Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro for Harp and Orchestra, could only agree. “We were not paid much, or even not at all, but we were all driven to play well regardless of a non-existent regular salary,” she added.
The late pianist Regalado, who was soloist in the Philippine premier of the Shostakovich piano concerto with the MSO under Bernardino Custodio, recalled that Manila was clean and had no traffic and pollution in the 1930s. It took only 35 minutes by bike from San Juan to the Manila Metropolitan Theater, where he was also accompanist of bass baritone Jose Mossesgeld Santiago Font (the first and last Filipino to sing at La Scala di Milan in the late ’20s) in the rehearsals for Rigoletto.
Basilio Manalo was a natural recruit for the MSO, because he grew up in a Nueva Ecija house surrounded by music. His maternal grandfather, Don Felimon Cajucom, the first civil governor of Nueva Ecija, had a daily regimen that included listening to opera and symphonic music at certain times of the day. Manalo recalled seeing the late conductor Alexander Lippay, in his sando, training his students. His first teacher was Luis Valencia (soloist of the MSO under Lippay in Bach’s A Major Concerto, Brahms’ D Major and Paganini’s D Major Concertos), and after Valencia was sent by his grandfather to Vienna on a scholarship, Manalo commuted from Cabanatuan to Manila for violin lessons with Ernesto Vallejo.
The ’50s and the ’60s should be the golden age of music in Manila because of the first-rate programming Manila’s music lovers got from the MSO
To Manalo, Dr. Zipper was almost like a surrogate father. “My musical career took off because of him. I studied counterpoint with him and he’s an extraordinary teacher. He teaches slowly but thoroughly,” he said in one of my last interviews with him.
When future MSO concertmaster and soloist Basilio Manalo was in his teens, he would often go up to Baguio where a neighbor, his future wife, Cecilia Mapa from Bacolod, would hear him play Abelardo’s Cavatina accompanied by his maternal grandmother, Leonor Mur (a piano graduate of the Liceo de Barcelona).
The war years were trying times for Dr. Zipper and some MSO soloists. Pianist Stella Goldenberg Brimo first played the Emperor concerto under Dr. Lippay, and then the Triple Concerto for Two Pianos (with Esteban Anguita and Aida Gonzales-Sanz) under Dr. Zipper.
But one concerto that she would not forget was Brahms’ B Flat Concerto, which she assiduously practised during the Japanese Occupation. She rehearsed at night and stayed home during the day even as she continued her piano lessons under Dr. Zipper, who biked regularly to her residence.
The Brahms piano score was one prized possession. She literally hid it under her blouse when it was time to evacuate to safer houses.
The late Brimo told this writer when she visited Manila many years back: “I hid it here (pointing to her breast) and I would not part with it even as we kept on moving from one place to another.”
After the war, Brimo played the Brahms concerto with the MSO for American GIs for seven consecutive nights in a Chinese movie house. In one performance, a blackout occurred but she didn’t stop playing. The American soldiers gave her standing ovation. Added the late pianist: “I was the natural choice for MSO soloist because all I did during Japanese Occupation was practise that concerto.”
The documentary on the life and times of Zipper was one of the finalists in the best documentary category of the Oscars.
The new generation of musicians and music lovers should remember that the Lippays, the Zippers, the Manalos, the Brimos represent the musical life and times of the MSO.
It was a time of gracious living. It was time for beautiful music-making.
It was a time when romance bloomed with musician-swains serenading their loved ones with Abelardo’s Cavatina.
It was also time for living dangerously with vintage Brahms and Beethoven and Dvorak in the background.
Author’s Note: Quoted lines from this article describing preparation for 1945 concert came from the following sources: Kellie D. Brown (2020), The Sound of Hope: Music as Solace, Resistance and Salvation During the Holocaust and World War II (Jefferson: McFarland), pp. 75-76; Frank Ephraim (2003,) Escape to Manila from Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror (University of Illinois Press), p. 172; and Paul F. Cummins (1992,) Dachau Song: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper (New York: Peter Lang Publishing). Dr. Legarda’s recollections appear in “The terrible cost of freedom,” Miguel A. Bernad, SJ, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 8 October 2007.
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