There was standing room only at the Guadalajara Chamber of Commerce auditorium on Friday, March 10 for the presentation of a book outlining the history and contributions of Conciertos Guadalajara, an organization that – since the founding of the city’s Symphony Orchestra in 1916 – has been bringing the world’s most famous soloists to the Degollado Theater and many other venues in Jalisco.
“Una Pasión Compartida” (A Shared Passion) is a collector’s item, an elegant 656-page hardback by Oscar Trejo Zaragoza, a playwright and editorial coordinator of Editorial Agata, the publisher of the book. About 200 pages of this beautifully printed tome review the history of the Guadalajara Concerts Association, its ups and downs, challenges and solutions and the people in the background who made it all happen. This section contains hundreds of posters and photos – many in color – of world renowned artists such as Pablo Casals, Jaschi Heifetz, Claude Bolling, Andrés Segovia, Gary Karr, Narciso Yepes, Facundo Cabral, Benjamin Britten and other outstanding musicians who were brought to Jalisco by the organization.
The rest of the book catalogues some of the most memorable programs occurring between 1951 and 2009.
The production of this book, says Trejo, involved “rising at the crack of dawn, working nonstop throughout the day and staying up all night long.”
Asked why he undertook such a mammoth task,” Trejo said someone had to demonstrate that “there is something else that is really Jalisco’s apart from mariachis and tequila.”
He continued: “Those of us who played a role in the history of Conciertos Guadalajara know what we have done, but we will not live forever. Some years from now this organization could be forgotten, so now is the time to create a testimonial and that is what this book is.”
Conciertos Guadalajara was first known as La Sociedad de Conciertos y Amigos de la Música when it was founded in 1919 by local people enthusiastic about promoting the fine arts. Many of the events it sponsored over the decades have been free of charge, such as the international festivals held in the metropolitan cathedral. The organization also presented free concerts outside Guadalajara with the proposal of bringing culture to every corner of the state. To help pay for these projects, they organized presentations by world-renowned artists, such as the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
Supporting the efforts of Conciertos Guadalajara, says Trejo, “many musicians played in the city out of pure good will, charging not even five percent of what they would usually receive. Just one example is Mexican tenor Fernando de la Mora.” This explains how it was possible for Tapatíos to enjoy operas featuring the likes of Plácido Domingo for an entrance fee of only ten pesos.
On other occasions, when it was necessary to raise funds to bring in lesser named soloists, the Association turned to several women who worked tirelessly to promote classical music in Guadalajara over the decades. For example, says Trejo, when it was discovered that Arthur Rubinstein charged US$2,000 for a performance, the Association sought the help of one of its greatest supporters, Teresa Casillas.
Said Casillas: “Rubinstein was the most expensive of all the artists I brought here and I had to perspire a lot to make it happen. When we were negotiating, they asked me what sort of guarantee they would have that his honorarios would actually be paid. I replied, ‘It is I who am contracting him – what more do you want?’ And they didn’t say another word – but I was trembling and my knees were knocking as I hung up the phone, because the truth was that I didn’t have enough money even to pay the orchestra. So I asked the owner of the Alameda Theater if we could hold the event there (for free), because it had far more seats than the Degollado. Then we charged four times the usual admission fees. We sold every last seat, so I was able to pay both the artist and the orchestra and to take Rubinstein out to dinner, and still we had money left over!”
Heart surgeon Carlos Juárez remembers Conciertos Guadalajara from his youth and says the concerts have played a “crucial” part his life, highlighting “Jean-Pierre Rampal and his solid gold flute and Narciso Yepes with his ten-string guitar, and the temperamental violinist Ruggiero Ricci and dozens and dozens of others.”
Doctor Roberto Pérez remembers when the great ballerina Anna Pavlova came to town. “What a performance she gave! Every seat in the Degollado was filled.”
Continued Pérez: “Another of our favorites was José Tamayo’s Anthology of the Zarzuela, which came here from Madrid. It was stupendous, extraordinary. And then there was the concert by Ravi Shankar. Another unforgettable evening was when Duke Ellington came to town. The jazz musicians walked up to the stage through the aisles, playing their instruments. It was truly apotheotic! I also remember the performance of virtuoso violinist Ruggiero Ricci. He could barely walk, but this was utterly forgotten the moment he began to play his Paganini variations.”
When I put my question to Robert Nelson, the former Jalisco Philharmonic violinist-violist whose name appears on many of the programs in Trejo’s book, I got a different point of view from concert-goers.
“I can’t forget Jean-Pierre Rampal’s visit here,” he told me. “I can still see him leaning over me, breathing down my neck and saying, ‘You must do it this way, this way!’ And then there was the visit in 2010 of Anshel Brusilow, the great concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Brusilow is one of the very best directors of Beethoven’s work, but after a full week of rehearsals, he turned to me and said, ‘Enough Beethoven! Do you know anyone who plays Bridge?’ So I told him I sometimes play Oh Hell with friends and off we went for a great evening. On the way back to Guadalajara, I asked Brusilow if he was the violin soloist in a certain 1970 recording of Respighi’s music which I particularly love. ‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘that would be me.’ Never in my life did I imagine I would someday be playing cards with the man who made that music which I so admired so many years before.”
The fact that this book’s chronicle ends in 2009 tells us something. Is that when the Golden Age of music ended? University of Guadalajara Maestro José Manuel Jurado addressed this question during the book launching. What does this monumental tome represent for Guadalajara’s music scene? Is it Mozart’s Requiem or Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus? Only time will tell.