Renowned as conductor, violinist, violist, and concertmaster, Guillermo Figueroa is Principal Conductor of the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Music in the Mountains Festival in Colorado and of the Lynn Philharmonia in Florida. He was the Music Director of the New Mexico Symphony and the Puerto Rico Symphony. International appearances, among others, include the Toronto, Iceland Symphony orquestas, Sinfónica de Chile and the National Symphony of Mexico. In the US he has appeared with the orchestras of Buffalo, Detroit, New Jersey, Memphis, Phoenix, Tucson and the New York City Ballet. As violinist, his recording of Ernesto Cordero’s violin concertos for the Naxos label received a Latin Grammy nomination in 2012. Figueroa was Concertmaster of the New York City Ballet, and a Founding Member and Concertmaster of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, making over 50 recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. He’s a regular guest with the Fine Arts, Emerson, American, and Orion string quartets and has given the world premieres of four violin concertos written for him such as Violin Concerto by del Aguila which he commissioned.

German conductor Dirk Meyer is Music Director of the Augusta Symphony, the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, and the Lyric Opera of the North. Meyer has guest conducted orchestras across North America, as well as Europe. Assistantships have led him to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein (Germany), the Vienna State Opera (Austria) and the Teatro Real in Madrid. He has collaborated with some of the finest artists, including Jan Lisiecki, Peter Serkin and Lynn Harrell, and is first prize winner of The American Prize in conducting and recipient of the Arts & Culture Initiative Award in Minnesota. Meyer is also the author of Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble Repertoire. A Catalog of Modern Music (Rowman & Littlefield). You can visit him on the web at – www.DirkMeyer.com

Was composed in 2006 on a commission from Buffalo’s public broadcasting station WNED and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra for its music director JoAnn Falletta’s International Guitar Music Competition. There is no guitar in the orchestra, but echoes of the guitar pervade the piece. In his program note, del Aguila writes that he views South America “as a ‘giant guitar’ . . . friendly, sentimental, nostalgic, and yet concealing a great powerful secret,” and that he “can’t think of this ‘giant guitar’ without remembering conflict and the dramatic political events of the 1970s,” events from which he fled, emigrating to the U.S. in 1978. The work begins with an ascending arpeggiation of the six pitches of the open strings of a standardly-tuned guitar, E A D G B E (which form a pentatonic scale), played on a harp – the closest sonority to a guitar in a conventional orchestra – doubled by muted strings. After that initial gesture, the harp continues ascending with that same sequence, quickly reaching beyond the range of the guitar, now accompanying a
plaintive melody in the piccolo and flute suggestive of Andean shepherds playing the quena, a breathy end-blown cane fife. Soon the piccolo and flute sing out an energetic Andean-sounding tune in a call and response with the other winds against an oscillating chordal pattern in the harp. This pentatonic melody and its accompaniment are remi- niscent of huaynos played by traditional ensembles that combine zampoñas (panpipes), charangos (small mandolin-like instruments), harp, and guitar. The material is further developed in the strings, now unmuted and pizzicato (also suggestive of a guitar). Their incessant rhythmic alternation of figurations of seven and eight beats is reinforced by percussion: at first castanets and cabaza (a Brazilian shaker somewhat akin to maracas), then a cowbell. Soon the horns join with the melody. Eventually the entire string section strums out sequences of quadruple stops interlocked in a hocket-like rhythmic pattern as the melody is passed around the orchestra. Eventually the harmonies expand from hinting at pentatonicism to a dissonant chromaticism, at one point feeling like a Rite of Spring in the New World. The tension grows and grows, propelled by throbbing bass drum strikes. Ultimately a siren wails, accompanied only by percussion instruments. A ferocious chord resounds across the entire orchestra, but it is snuffed out by a simultaneous thwack on timpani, tam-tam and bass drum.

Exists both as a sextet, op. 84 (2005) and the present work for chamber orchestra, op. 102 (2010). In both versions, the music is cast in three movements, each modelled after a popular South American dance: a Brazilian samba; an Argentinian tango; and finally, a Uruguayan milonga. According to del Aguila, the “music conveys the general mood of this period of great prosperity and optimism that preceded the social collapse of the 1970s in the hands of militaristic regimes.” The original version was recorded by Camerata San Antonio on a Grammy-nominated 2010 recording of the same name devoted to del Aguila’s chamber music. The Sarasota Orchestra commissioned the version recorded here, in which del Aguila takes advantage of the greater resources of the orchestra, creating greater contrast between the different types of material and devising harmonies that add a greater intensity and more emotional ambiguity to the original music
I. Samba is the first movement of Salón Buenos Aires. It begins with melodies whose seeming diatonic innocence is subverted by bitonal counterpoint. Eventually, propelled by jazzy figurations in the piano and percussion, lush orchestration transforms the texture into something that sounds almost cinematic. Almost. A chime and other percussion sound oddly out of place, as if a few frames from an unrelated film noir were spliced into a Hollywood dance number . . . but they do not ultimately change the mood.
II. The second and longest movement, “Tango to Dream” (“Tango para soñar”), is much more mysterious. It begins very quietly, with string tremolos punctuated by ad- libbed glissandos inside the piano and the roar of a wind machine. When a prominent melodic line finally emerges, it is more like a lullaby than anything remotely resembling a tango. Very gradually, a passionate tango takes hold, in idiomatic orchestration, only to dissolve into murky, introverted textures, ending the movement as elusively as it began.
III. The concluding “Obsessed Milonga” (“Milonga obsesionada”) is a spirited dance that begins in, and frequently returns to, an off-kilter rhythmic cycle of 13/16. Del Aguila explains that the “Milonga rhythm is distorted to irregular patterns as it beats obsessively. Underneath the happiness of this movement, there is tension and angst.”

“El viaje de una vida” (The Journey of a Lifetime) – Was composed in 2007. Commissioned and premiered by the New Mexico Symphony and its music director Guillermo Figueroa (who was the premiere’s soloist as well as its conductor, and is also the soloist on the
present recording), it is one of four concertante works for soloist and orchestra to which del Aguila has thus far affixed the title Concerto (the others are works for clarinet, cello, and piano), and it is a formidable addition to the repertoire for violin and orchestra. The Concerto is a very apt sonic metaphor for the struggle between an individual and society, and del Aguila’s Violin Concerto partakes of this paradigm. He writes, “The violin soloist personifies the traveler who becomes the protagonist of the story; the orchestra represents the outside world as he sees it. As the work progresses, the actual trip becomes a symbol of a more existential journey.” Del Aguila’s concerto slightly varies the three-movement concerto formula. Here, there are four movements, although the very brief third movement is immediately followed by a much longer finale. In del Aguila’s narrative, a “traveler abandons his homeland (Spain) to embark on a long voyage. A simple, undulating theme carries him steadily across the ocean. During the long journey, he reminisces and loses himself in introspection.” The first movement,
I. “Crossing the Ocean to a New World” (“Cruzando el océano hacia un nuevo mundo”), opens with the unaccompanied violin, starting from the instrument’s lowest note and ascending to the top of its range before the harp and cello add some support. Gradually the rest of the orchestra joins in, but the soloist always remains foregrounded, playing lush, rhapsodic melodies.
In a live performance, for the cantabile second movement “(Vidalita) – In the
II. Purple Land” (“En la tierra purpura”), the stage lights are dimmed and the soloist performs from backstage. It opens with a mournful melody traded between two bassoons, accompanied only by two cellos and a doublebass, all pizzicato. The violin soloist, who is amplified in order to be heard from the distance, enters with a countermelody, more as a member of a chamber ensemble than a soloist combating an orchestra. These six instruments are all del Aguila needs for this reverie.
III.The extremely brief third movement, “The Return” (“El regreso”) is more like an accompanied cadenza. It opens with a harsh sforzando chord distributed across the entire orchestra, ending as unexpectedly as it began when the soloist re-enters the stage, playing while walking, described in the score as “confronting musicians and audience . . . almost threatening.” This intermezzo is the protagonist’s “imagined return to his birthplace many years later, as he confronts his past.”
IV. The “Finale” opens with an ascending glissando on an unaccompanied harp followed by an extended, briskly-paced passage for the orchestra. When the soloist reappears, the remainder of the work is something of a face-off between them. Thematic material from the opening movement resurfaces, transformed into something far removed from its initial rhapsodic character. At the very end, the expressive opening material of the concerto returns, nearly unaltered. But after a descent back down to the lowest possible note on the violin, the place where the concerto began, the soloist remains silent for the last nine measures while the rest of the orchestra loudly and relentlessly plays on. In del Aguila’s words, “The traveler realizes that he can’t go home again: the place he left long ago is lost forever and only exists as it was in his mind.”

(Tempering Drums), op. 126, was composed in 2020 for the Augusta Symphony and its music director Dirk Meyer. It is the most recent work included herein, and perhaps the most abstract. There are no sweeping melodies, just a series of catchy jagged motifs characterized by rhythmic syncopation. Del Aguila describes this piece as a series of “imaginary events happening during the traditional ceremony of tempering the
drums by the fire as it’s often performed by the Candombe players of Uruguay before a night street ceremony.” It is not an attempt to recreate the music performed in the all-night ceremonies, but rather, the progression of the cold drumskins (hollow, dry sonorities) slowly becoming animated by the fire, inspiring joyous dancing throughout the town. After a brief and almost imperceptibly quiet introduction – a bass drum roll, string tremolos, and harp – the piano starts an incessant one-note ostinato hammering out the principle rhythmic cell of the piece one step lower than the highest possible pitch on the keyboard. Its exact pitch is less clearly perceptible than its unmistakable constantly repeating rhythmic cycle, mostly a composite rhythm of 3/8, 3/8, 3/16, and 3/16. Though it adds up to a measure of 9/8, it is a cycle of four beats of different lengths. This rhythm is juxtaposed with occasional flourishes from pizzicato strings and percussion, plus some unexpected sonorities – a timpano struck on the shell of its kettle with a triangle stick, two horn players slapping the top of their mouthpieces with their palms on an off-beat, etc. The ostinato suddenly stops, but the momentum is maintained with a frenetic harp solo consisting of a sequence of persistent ascending scales accompanied by long sustained notes and trills in the strings, now bowed. Soon a celesta imitates the harp’s sequences, followed, in turn, by winds, pizzicato strings, and piano. Then the violins, held like guitars, strum quadruple stops in a variety of different syncopations within cycles of
9/4, but because of the displaced accents it sounds like uneven sequences of three beats and, at times, five beats. The energy keeps intensifying, with various instruments in the orchestra occasionally grabbing the limelight – the brass, the xylophone, etc. – culminating in an explosive climax. Del Aguila has stated that he’s “always been fascinated by the dramatic power of rhythm, by its ability to capture our emotions, and by its tendency . . . to often drive us to unavoidable, out-of-control climactic endings.”

American Record Guide May/June 2023 review by Nathan Faro

Miguel del Aguila Dirk Meyer

Miguel del Aguila Dirk Meyer Guillermo Figueroa

Miguel del Aguila
Dirk Meyer
Augusta Symphony

Miguel del Aguila
Dirk Meyer
Augusta Symphony

Miguel del Aguila
Christian Amonson
Dirk Meyer

Miguel del Aguila
Dirk Meyer
Anastasia Petrunina