From a prominent man to a great musician

The latest issue of the Catalan Musical Magazine dedicates a comprehensive and accurate dossier to the figure of Ricardo Viñes (1875-1943), a leading figure of Catalan piano music and of the musical avant-garde of the first third of the 20th century, who has an indisputable international projection. He was a generational companion and friend of composers such as Manuel de Falla, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, and his interpretative technique is still remembered through some of the recordings he made throughout his life. An intense life despite a sad end, with Viñes condemned to poverty in his last three years, lived in Barcelona.

It was logical, then, that in the midst of commemorating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth, the musician from Lleida would be remembered in a hall like the Palau de la Música, where he had performed so many times. And the program followed a biographical logic, with pieces by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Eduard Toldrà, Joan Manén and the original version of Paintings at an exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky.

A concert of this nature obviously can't accommodate everyone, but the selection was apt, based on premiered compositions by Viñes himself (with the exception of the Mussorgsky piece). It was precisely French, Russian, and Catalan music that he performed most extensively, so the catalog was sufficient.

To all this must be added the interpretive skill of Lluís Rodríguez-Salvà, sensitive, with immaculate technique and excellently molded to the styles requested by the selected composers: the sinuous textures of Ravel, the transparency and tonal ambiguities Reflejos dans el eau from the first album ofImages) and, above all, the percussive charge of Mussorgsky's immense piece, with a concluding passage (The Great Gate of Kiev) majestic and with almost symphonic resonances at the hands of Rodríguez-Salvá.

A commemorative concert in homage to a great man, and very well served by a musician from head to toe. The evening inaugurated the Palau Piano series. It's a shame that its extraordinary nature didn't bring a larger audience to the modernist auditorium. The fact is that some of our great musicians are little known or poorly understood by music lovers at home. A real shame.