Bàrbara Duran (Bordoy)

Musicologist and writer

THE MEETING POINT OF MANY PATHS

Miquel Capllonch is one of the best-known Mallorcan composers because, in part, the earliest studies on Mallorcan composers focused on his work. Pianist Joan Moll was one of the first to record pieces by Capllonch, a musician who was well known and loved by his family, given that his father, the philologist Francesc de Borja Moll, used to play some of his pieces on the piano. Miquel Capllonch (1861-1935) is not just any musician. Although he was born in Pollença, at that time a more isolated town than the Pollença of today, he studied at the Madrid Conservatory and later trained in Berlin, which was one of the centres of the expansion of German Romanticism.

There, he met and became personally acquainted with Clara Wieck, Robert Schumann’s widow, who gave him advice on his work and recommended that he publish Nocturne. It is well-known that this extraordinarily gifted pianist and composer was a close friend of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), whom she adored. And today’s repertoire intertwines some of these artistic relationships that generate musical traces; ties that connect the equilibrium of classicism and early romanticism with the profoundly expressive manifestations of late 19^th and early 20th-century music. This contained but free expressivity, with its solid architecture and yet deliciously fluid and flowing, is what characterises Brahms’s Ave Maria op. 12; but also the Rhapsodie op. 79 n. 2. The piano takes on the role of narrator of an emotional journey, with fragments of passion, a certain sustained torment and moments of bizarre fantasy.

We can just as well imagine Clara Wieck listening to this Rhapsodie, a work by her great friend, but also listening to Nostalgia during her meetings with Capllonch. This is one of those pieces that exemplify the piano music literature intended for lovers of the new master instrument. It needed to expand with compositions of a different technical level to feed a repertoire that was to become the favourite of the bourgeoisie of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Along these lines, we can also consider the Moments Musicaux op. 94 no. 2 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828). What is a “musical moment”? Perhaps it is the moment to enjoy the beauty of the piano’s timbre, which combines power and poetic capacity. This personal and unique poetry is one of the tools that Schubert uses in his piano works.

But it is quite another thing to play the Polonaise-fantaisie op. 61 by Frederic Chopin (1810 to 1849), also linked to Mallorca by his famous stay on the island in 1838. The Polonaise-fantaisie is not one of the pieces conceived in Mallorca but dates from a later period of his production (1846), and it includes some of the most mature compositional approaches of his career. It is a continuous search for expanding the piano’s own exclusive language, leading him along harmonic paths and formal extensions, unthinkable in the previous generation of composers. Although the general public does not very well know it, it is and has become one of the fundamental pieces in international competitions dedicated to Chopin in the world of connoisseurs.

Felix Mendelssohn’s music (1809 to 1847) is more balanced and classical in style. The Drei Motteten op. 39 are diaphanous, clear, with the German composer’s characteristic positive energy, a personal trait that fills many of his compositions but does not disguise a refined and tender way of being. This neat arrangement is also common in Michael Haydn’s (1737-1806) Magnificat. Although it is full of the elegant and courtly tone expected of a religious piece performed on solemn occasions, here the excellent artistry of the Haydn family is present, Franz Joseph Haydn himself acknowledging his brother Michael’s superiority in sacred compositions. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), a rare and unique personality, delivers a more romantic conception of the heart in the Tantum Ergo. However, the general feeling is of a more audience-pleasing composition rather than a contemplative piece. Nevertheless, there is compositional nerve and unique personal touch, the hand of a Berlioz who is difficult to classify.

Today, the works of Josef Rheinberger (1839-1901) are the subject of a well-deserved reappraisal. Although apparently uncomplicated, they reveal a beauty close to the aesthetics of Mendelssohn’s Drei Motteten, in which clarity and serenity of expression are crucial elements. But if we are talking about beauty, Nigra sum by Pau Casals (1876-1973) is a small work of art. Written for the Escolania de Montserrat in 1943, the text is from the Bible’s Song of Songs. “I am dark but beautiful”, a love song to the figure of the Virgin of Montserrat, the Moreneta, a work that highlights Casals’ qualities as a composer.

The links that unite the pieces in today’s concert are no less a sample of the invisible ties that unite the spiritual and artistic life around Mallorca. The Escolania de Lluc is the equivalent, on the island, of this Escolania de Montserrat so dear to Casals. At the same time, the winding and rare paths linking some of the personalities mentioned above are intertwined here: Joan Moll and his father, Francisco de Borja Moll, with Capllonch; the latter’s friendship with Clara Wieck and her intimate relationship with Brahms; and the imprint left by Chopin on the island. The balance, magnificence and serenity of the music of Mendelssohn, Schubert, Michael Haydn and Rheinberger also accompany the immensity of the mountains surrounding the monastery of Lluc, a meeting place for the people of Mallorca.