José Luis Turina faces a high-flying residency

By Jorge Fernández Guerra
(Review published in the newspaper El País. Madrid, January 17, 2024)


The Madrid-born composer achieves a refined musical composition, polished down to the last detail. He does not mask the flashes of expression that are so pleasing to hear, even for the most skeptical of listeners.

The CNDM (National Center for Musical Diffusion) has chosen the Madrid-born composer José Luis Turina (1952) as composer-in-residence for its current season, a recognition that has been long awaited but nevertheless offers one of the most enticing and extensive creative journeys in the current musical panorama of our country.
It is difficult to summarize Turina: explosive and serene, conventional and experimental, violent and delicate... all at once. Perhaps for this reason, this residency, which offers a broad overview of his extensive work, is the best, if not the only, way to encompass a trajectory that eludes easy definitions. The concert presented last night by the Arbós Trio manages, within a confined scope, to reveal some of these facets and affects of Turina. Two pieces of broad contrast, nervous and virtuosic the first, Tres tercetos (2003), subtle and reflective the second, Viaggio di Parnaso (2005). Even if some details were missing, the encore offered by the Arbós Trio, Tango, by Turina himself, added elements of sensuality and playfulness to what was heard.
And it was not easy to come out well with this semi-portrait within a concert where, in addition, two classics of recent decades were heard: the Trio No. 2, by the Italian Salvatore Sciarrino (1947), and the Piano Trio (2012), by the Finn Magnus Lindberg (1958). And Turina achieves this cleanly; his refined musical composition, polished down to the last detail, does not mask the flashes of expression that are so pleasing to hear, even for the most skeptical of listeners, and all this without concessions. A musical work, in short, that calls for admiration while being unabashedly savored; a sort of miracle that benefits from the passage of time to grant it all the artistic importance it achieves.
As for the two aforementioned works by composers other than the Madrid-born creator, it is a good reflection to listen to them again now. Sciarrino has been one of the most acclaimed composers of recent decades. His journeys through the undergrounds of musical sound made him a reference, a sort of Italian Lachenmann, more vital and fleshy than the German puritan. Some of those values still have validity, but they are no longer in vogue; the construction of alternative instrumental sounds is waning. Despite this, Sciarrino is still enjoyable to listen to, even for the uninitiated; but the violent way in which the world has changed, especially the Western area, makes us wonder if what concerned composers in the last decades of the past century still has validity.
On the other side of the scale is the Finn Magnus Lindberg, a fetish author of the main group that his country offered, along with Kaija Saariaho. Lindberg, slightly younger than the paradigmatic creator recently deceased, has a special shine in the chosen field of his complex eclecticism and highly effective sonority. His Piano Trio, the most recent piece offered in the concert, leaves a strong impression, like a good Nordic meal. The classical division into three movements works very well for him, and the last one rises as a musical trophy above what precedes it.
In short, the choice of the program, I understand, by the Arbós Trio, is a genuine menu without waste and, as I said at the beginning, Turina survives with high marks the challenge of confronting two models that are paradigms of what has been done in these last decades.
Regarding the Arbós Trio, instrumental protagonist of the concert, it is difficult not to attribute a significant part of the success of the session to them. This group, formed by pianist Juan Carlos Garvayo, violinist Ferdinando Trematore, and cellist José Miguel Gómez, reaches its best vintages with admirable maturity. The only change in their over 25 years of existence has been in the violinist on a couple of occasions, and the young Italian Ferdinando Trematore behaves like a veteran virtuoso, capable of the greatest feats, providing exemplary harmony with the two founding musicians. It is not easy, believe me, to make music from recent decades, with different poetics and techniques, sound naturally idiomatic in a violin, cello, and piano trio. Undoubtedly, the Arbós Trio and their splendid maturity are already a collective success, an achievement that concerns us all in a country where such feats are so costly.