15, June
2016
Azahar Ensemble in the Chamber Music Hall of the Philharmonie Berlin
On 27 May 2016 we performed our début recital for Deutschlandradio Kultur, and we were fortunate that it took place in an ideal venue: the Chamber Music Hall of the Philharmonie Berlin.
The concert had been programmed two years previously, and several months before “the big night” we could already feel our nerves starting to sizzle. The incredible venue, our début with an important broadcasting entity, the challenging repertoire, many friends sitting in the audience and a metropolis with an incredible musical culture – these were just some of the factors that added some pressure and motivated us to prepare ourselves intensely and to truly give our best in the recital.
We began our rehearsals on 15 May in Zürich, preparing both the recital in Berlin and a foreseen collaboration with the "Bläser Serenade Zürich". This was not a normal rehearsal period, and we all knew it. A few months earlier, we had sat down together and discussed about ourselves, our relationship together and the ensemble, and about how we could manage to go on improving and growing as a family.
One of the first things our former teacher Sergio Azzolini explained to us is that we are 5 different people, with 5 distinct personalities. That is precisely what gives our ensemble its unmistakable, individual sound. After our group conversation some months ago, we came to realize that we did not want to become an ensemble that “only” shared the fact of performing together; it was not enough just to get together to make music. After six years of playing as a group, it is quite normal that we sometimes suffer from personal disconnections: if you can already have misunderstandings in a couple, imagine a group of 5 people!
From the first day working on this new project, a new harmony established itself among us, a mutual understanding we both noticed and thoroughly enjoyed. The Spanish motto that “people grow to understand one another by talking things over” is entirely correct: everything seemed to have improved and worked even better than other times. Azahar Ensemble rehearsals are intense ... VERY INTENSE. For instance, although we have probably played Samuel Barber’s “Summer Music” a thousand times together, I love the fact that we always find new aspects to improve upon, change, or discuss. The Berlin recital was also to feature a piece we had only performed twice until then: Ligeti's 10 Pieces for Wind Quintet.
The last time we had played that work was at the final round of the Munich International ARD Music Competition (September 2014), and we had only rehearsed it together for the first time just a few days before the competition. So now we needed plenty of time to reach a point where we could feel comfortable with this incredible – and quite difficult – piece. Shortly after starting with Azahar, Maria Alba had often exclaimed: “We have to play the 10 Pieces by Ligeti!!!” We listened to them and shrugged: “Yeah, sure”. I could not imagine myself playing that work, I didn’t understand it and thought we should play something more “beautiful” instead. At that moment we were all wrong: Maria Alba, for one, because she wanted to play such a piece at a moment when we were clearly not mature enough or consolidated as a group, and the rest of us because we underestimated its difficulty.
Ten pieces with a duration of 50 seconds to 1 minute per piece: you wouldn’t believe the amount of rehearsal time we had to dedicate to each one of them!! It is an extreme composition; extreme in musical and instrumental terms. It is written for flute, alto flute in G, piccolo, oboe, oboe d’amore, English horn, clarinet, horn and bassoon. It demands that you play every note from the lowest to the highest, from the softest pianissimo to the loudest and most breathtaking fortissimo. When you start to truly grasp this piece, you stop in your tracks, dumbfounded and astonished at every single bar.
I don't know if you’ve ever had that feeling: you play something difficult, and when it’s finished, you think: OMG, THAT’S REALLY DIFFICULT!! That’s not even the feeling I had with Ligeti. I thought: “Difficult? NO, incredibly difficult!!” But as you start to rehearse it, the “difficult” becomes “amazing” and you start to appreciate and enjoy all the impossible rhythms, the melodic lines played by all instruments in just one second, the colours that make you close your eyes, and the high and loud notes that produce sound clearly akin to a lower harmonic.
The day of our first recital with this programme arrived: 24 May. We were playing Barber and Hindemith (and two double quintets) with the “Bläser Serenade Zürich”. Everything was already planned for the day: free time in the morning so that we could rest and eat properly, a sound check at 4PM and the concert at 7PM. But all that planning and everything else I had on my mind was completely erased from the moment I looked at my phone that morning at 9AM. There were too many missed calls from my family. I called back, still in bed with the lights turned off. The news caused my body to “float in bed” for several seconds. “It isn’t true, is it?” I exclaimed to my mother. The answer was not the one I wanted to hear :(. My father’s death the previous night occupied 100% of my mind. In one hour I was with my luggage in the airport in order to go home on the first available flight.
I asked Maria Alba not to travel with me that day, but to play at the recital instead, for if 2 of us were missing, it would have been cancelled. Fortunately, my friend Tomás Gallart was willing and able play at my place in the concert and I am very grateful for that. That night, Maria Alba told me that she was going to come. In case you didn’t know, she is my girlfriend. She also knew my father. I asked her not to come – neither on her own, nor with the rest of the quintet; they already had their flight tickets organized for travelling to Berlin the next day, and they needed to stay focused on the concert in the Philharmonie.
When, the next morning, I saw all of them in my beloved Galicia I realized how much I needed every one of them at that moment. A night train, sleeping only a couple of hours, taking the very first flight to Galicia, organizing everything so that another friend picked them up at the airport and they had a place to stay: those are just some of the feats they had to accomplish to be with me at that moment. Every hug with them somehow managed to release my pain. Maria Alba told me that they had spoken together about the possibility of playing at the funeral, but they didn't know if that was going to be physically possible, due to the emotion. Nevertheless, at the moment when my mother asked them, you could only hear a categorical YES in response from all of them.
We played together, we felt the same feelings together, and that was the homage we paid to my beloved father, who would have been very proud to see that my Azahar family was also present. At 5:30PM next day we were once more at the airport, ready to travel, together, to Berlin. It was raining in Galicia and my heart was weeping. A suitcase that didn’t arrive properly, a short nap, an interview on the radio and a night rehearsal: that is what happened on May 25th. It was already the day before the concert. A lot of details still needed to be rehearsed, and the accumulated fatigue from the previous days started to take its toll. Yet we were still able to rehearse with 120% concentration and motivation.
27 May marked our début recital for Deutschlandradio Kultur. We arrived at 10AM to rehearse in the auditorium and to try out the many details each piece demanded from us: “not so long there”, “we must breathe together”... at 6:30PM we were warming up together in the Hall. I just stopped for two minutes and took a good long look at my colleagues, friends and Azahar family. I felt lucky to be there with them. I couldn’t imagine being there with anyone else.
The radio journalist was announcing us as we held hands together. A few seconds during which glances, caresses and words full of affection helped us enjoy every single passage in the programme, every rest, every silence, all kinds of complicity, and forget about the “difficulty” of the pieces we were performing. Almost 40 friends came to listen and offer us their wholehearted support. Their bravos and applauses are still sounding in my mind. To all of you, thank you so much! It is never easy to play in a live concert, but when you do so surrounded by a part of your family it truly becomes much easier.
Thank you, Azahar family.
Antonio Lagares.