MUSIC-AMERICAS: Recognition for Classical Peruvian Composers

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Mar 17 1998 (IPS) - European composers have dominated western classical music for so long that sometimes it is easy to forget the works of other composers. Thanks to talented Greek-Peruvian pianist Alexandro Kapelis, however, at least the works of two Peruvian composers finally may attract wider attention.

Kapelis himself deserves recognition as one of the more promising young classical musicians currently performing in New York.

Remarkably, Kapelis – born in Lima to a Greek father and Peruvian mother – has received accolades in all three countries in which he has studied, after earning a soloist’s diploma from the Greek University, a master’s degree from Mannes College of Music in New York and a performance degree from Peru’s National School of Music.

After having studied with prominent musicians in all three countries — including Teresa Quesada and Rosa Basurco in Peru and Dmitri Toufexis in Greece — Kapelis has become adept at playing both the European repertory and works of Iberian-American composers.

At a recent recital at New York’s Spanish Institute, Kapelis proved that he could take on the European masters, performing a pensive reading of Haydn’s ‘Sonata in C minor’ and capturing the lyrical, moody tone of Chopin’s ‘Nocturne in C-flat minor’.

The highlight of the young pianist’s performance, however, was his rendition of works by two Peruvian composers scarcely heard in the United States – Alejandro Bisetti and Roberto Carpio. Kapelis says he is intrigued by both men, despite their divergent styles: the former with his modernist, academic pieces and the latter with his emphasis on Peruvian themes.

Bisetti wrote pieces that combined the modernist touch of Scriabin with Schonberg’s atonality, in a style owing much to modern European classical trends and not to Peruvian influences. On the other hand, Bisetti’s music is “directly inspired on the pentatonic scale and on the folk music of Peru,” Kapelis notes.

Despite such differences, Kapelis plays both Peruvian masters vividly, bringing out the ominous, uneasy quality of Bisetti’s fragile 1961 piece ‘Nocturne’ and using a tinkling, flowing series of notes to make Carpio’s ‘Los Quitasuenos’ sound like an enchanted waterfall.

The study of the two Peruvian composers shows how Kapelis brings his own cultural roots into his music. ” ‘Los quitasuenos’ are some ornaments made of paper by the poor people of Peru” in celebration of the Festival of the Virgin, Kapelis explains – a fact he only learned recently.

As a result, when he plays Carpio’s melody, he does it with a fragility that underscores the delicacy of the fancy paper ornaments that are the only items some of the followers of the Virgin can offer to show their devotion.

Kapelis is in fact constantly intrigued by the psychology of classical compositions, and by what moods the artists meant to show in their pieces. Describing Albeniz’s famed ‘Iberian Suite,’ Kapelis evokes – both in his comments and in his playing – the busy street scenes of the composition ‘El Puerto’ and the stamping, Gypsy-derived sounds of ‘Triana.’

Albeniz, Kapelis argues, intended his suite to describe the activity of various parts of Madrid and other Spanish cities, and lead him to ask, “What happened in his life? What did he remember when he wrote ‘El Puerto’ and ‘Triana’?”

That need to capture the mood and the spirit of compositions distinguishes Kapelis from most young university-trained classical musicians, says Sunny Carballeira, chair of the Spanish Institute’s music programme.

“Everybody has technique nowadays — you can’t turn a corner without (seeing musicians with) technique,” Carballeira says. “But this young man has something special.” A rarity among his generation, she argues, Kapelis plays expressively and evocatively.

Combined with his interest in preserving some Iberian-American masters, his emotional and psychological explorations into songs make Alexandro Kapelis one of the most promising classical musicians of any nationality working in New York today.