"Un artista lo que hace son variaciones de una sola obra toda su vida" / "What an artist does are variations of a single work all his life"

Interview published in the Culture & Shows section of the newspaper Diario de Avisos. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, January 13, 2000

By Eduardo García Rojas


José Luis Turina has lived in a kind of "balloon" or "honeymoon" these last three years. "It's been a good time," admits the National Music Prize winner, who, in addition to composing the Piano Concerto for the XVI Canary Islands Music Festival, among his projects is the production of an opera entitled D. Q.

José Luis Turina does not respond to the cliché that is usually held about the contemporary composer. Affable, didactic, you can tell right away that his thing, apart from writing music, is teaching. A job that he performs with the same enthusiasm as when he embarks on a symphony or an opera.
Turina is current in the Islands because the direction of the XVI Canary Islands Music Festival commissioned one of the four world premieres that this year can be heard on the stage of the Guimerá Theater in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and in the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The work, entitled Concerto for piano and orchestra, was performed last Monday in the capital of Tenerife by the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra (OST), under the direction of Víctor Pablo and the pianist Guillermo González, tonight it can also be heard , in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Why “Concerto for piano and orchestra”?
"When the Festival management proposed the commission to me, they did not impose me any type of condition, except that it be symphonic and that it had a duration that covered a part of the concert. That is, that I did not compose an overture or a long work that would eat up the rest of the audition. I began to think about this idea, so it occurred to me, perhaps because I had assumed it as a pending subject, to write a piano concerto. Curiously, I already had one for violin, which, precisely, premiered and performed the OST with Víctor Pablo at the Alicante Festival in 1988".

On a creative level, what kind of problems did this concert raise for you?
"On the one hand, there is the fact that composers, artists in general, what we like about creation is the risk of the unknown. In other words, we don't like doing what is already known, because it doesn't pose any complications. Also, for those of us who don't make utilitarian music, since we don't make a living from it -I earn my "lentils" as a teacher-, composing is a luxury because you can create to your liking".

Earlier I was talking about certain complications in the composition of a piano concerto...
"A piano concerto always poses, not only for me, but also for a romantic and classical composer, a problem of balance: the impossible reconciliation between the timbre of the piano and that of the orchestra, since when they compose for a symphonic and orchestral instrument, such as the violin or the flute, it is already integrated into the orchestral sonority itself and can be immersed in or out of it at will, but not with the piano, because it is always present, which requires a type of different speech.

Did you think of the Tenerife pianist Guillermo González when you composed the work?
"The truth is that I didn't write it with anyone in mind, I limited myself to composing the work I wanted, while disregarding the technical possibilities it might have. When Rafael Nebot, director of the Festival, asked me who I wanted to perform it I did not want to take sides, I left the decision in his hands. Now, I warned him that it was a very difficult work, both for the orchestra and for the soloist. I was very happy when I found out that Guillermo had agreed to perform it".

La Fura dels Baus has also commissioned you to compose an opera. In that sense, what genre do you stay with?
"I really like the symphonic world, but an opera... is the genre par excellence, it brings it all together. Also, today, with new technologies, its possibilities are immense. In any case, I am one of those who think that what the artist does in reality is a single work in his whole life, even if it takes different forms".

Why does the public that does not understand contemporary music identify it with a difficult genre?
"What I think is that there is a lack of interest in this type of creation. In addition, contemporary composers have a difficult time because we have chosen a type of language that is not the reference language for society, which is still tonal."

But it is not strange to you that the classics and romantics are closer to the amateur than contemporary composers...
"I can only tell you that you are very right, but today's world is so complicated... The classical, romantic repertoire is closer to today's man than the contemporary one. That does not happen in cinema, painting, literature... Although perhaps the culprits of this situation are the musicians themselves, many of whom have radicalized their positions and have become elitist by renouncing the past and tradition, in addition, the contemporary composer is facing a very deep dilemma, because he has not found the language of the future. In the specific case of my music, I do not agree with this current of deconstruction, my position is to include, through sound suggestions, a series of elements that help the listener from start to end".