Symphonic music of Hubert de Blanck at the San Felipe Neri Oratory

The music of the Cuban-Dutch composer Hubert de Blanck will return to the San Felipe Neri Oratory on the first Saturday of May, in a concert that will present to the contemporary world seven of his symphonic works, all unpublished, which will be reissued in Havana after decades in the archives.  This cultural event will feature the excellent soloists Marcos Madrigal on piano and soprano Bárbara Llanes.

This project of the Lyceum Mozartiano Orchestra, in collaboration with the National Museum of Music and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Cuba, involves locating, transcribing, assembling, performing and recording the handwritten scores of the Dutch professor, pianist and composer, which are kept in the museum’s archives.

Among the works to be performed are La danza tropical -a waltz for light soprano-, a suite of dances for orchestra in three movements -Romanza, Cachuca, and Tarantella-, the Capricho cubano, and the Andante and Allegro, the latter two for piano and orchestra.

The project of recovering the music of the illustrious pedagogue began in November 2022 with a chamber concert in the context of the Habana Clásica Festival, recorded live in the San Felipe Neri Oratory, according to a note from the Lyceum Mozartiano.

This album, the first in the collection Hubert de Blanck: a wandering Dutchman (La ceiba label of the Havana Historian’s Office), has received four nominations in Cubadisco 2023: chamber music, liner notes, sound design in an uncontrolled environment and graphic design.

Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez