Málaga, Edgar Neville Auditorium, September 9, 2022, Tribute Concert to Antón García Abril. Víctor Eloy López, conductor. Javier García Moreno, guitar. Paula Coronas, piano. "Mudéjar Concerto for Guitar and String Orchestra," "Alba de los caminos for Piano and String Orchestra," "Canciones y danzas para Dulcinea" by Antón García Abril.

A downpour of questions inundates our thoughts after listening to the concert at hand: Is music a viable means of communication or a gateway to the depths of the human psyche? How can a composer, conceived as a creative entity, build an entire universal cosmos while also being uniquely personal from a musical cell? These and many other questions besieged us as we listened with the utmost attention not only to the notes emanating from Antón García Abril’s compositions but also when the maestro infused each of his musical elements with a unique musical language. This tribute is well-deserved by the Málaga Philharmonic Orchestra [OFM] and its Málaga-born conductor, Víctor Eloy López, along with the soloists Javier García Moreno and Paula Coronas, both of whom are also from Málaga. They offered a masterful interpretation to one of the finest composers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The complexity of García Abril’s work is so significant that I cannot help but compare it to a grand architectural structure. We are dealing with a composer who turns his compositions into true sound art. It is not easy to make the listener perceive a clear sonic language when the technical difficulty of the compositions demands great resolution from the performers, a capacity displayed without hesitation or doubt by the musicians who performed it.

The “Mudéjar Concerto for Guitar and String Orchestra,” composed in 1985, was dedicated by García Abril to Teruel, his hometown, considering that UNESCO declared the city a “Universal City” for the preservation of its Mudéjar architecture. One of the remarkable challenges of this beautiful concerto is its abundance of rhythmic contrasts and combinations. It could be said that García Abril invites the performers to dance through his staves with a rhythm as typically Spanish as the peteneras – sometimes clear and sometimes not so much – turning this rhythmic challenge into a real headache for the musicians. Hemioles follow one another, while the solo guitar can be in three-four time and the orchestra in six-eight, just as an example of this rhythmic complexity. However, this difficulty has been perfectly managed, like a well-oiled machine. Great work by the young Málaga conductor Víctor Eloy and extraordinary harmony with the members of the OFM, who also understood and matched the technical level of Javier García Moreno. Málaga once again shone on the fingers – this time Mudéjar – of this passionate interpreter, whose technique is so perfectly refined that he made the incredibly challenging staves of the score seem like child’s play. The Mudéjar Concerto is of immense sonic expressiveness.

All the performers captivated with passion, sometimes contained in certain phrases and bursting out in others. The three movements of these beautiful Mudéjar pages connect with the Spanish tradition. In the first movement, Moderato, those beautiful melodic cells are presented as a kind of introduction, which will interweave and transform into clear and direct communicative melodies while exuding great lyricism and melancholy. It gallops towards an Allegro non troppo where the guitar and orchestra engage in a passionate and sonorous dialogue.