A Joyous Anniversary with the Granada Quartet

The Alhaurín de la Torre Chamber Music Series, the oldest of its kind in our area, has reached its twentieth year. Over its ... usual stage, about fifty different ensembles have performed, delivering a total of roughly 143 works, selected from the most refined and demanding pieces of the classical-romantic chamber music repertoire, without neglecting retrospective glances at the Baroque, bold forays into 20th-century music, and nods to intriguing postmodern mixtures. All this is combined with a commendable sensitivity towards incorporating new performing talents: an open-mindedness that has occasionally led them to collaborate with educational institutions in our city.

This miracle of endurance and quality, a sustained commitment to the most intimate (and perhaps therefore the most deeply human) tradition of music, has been made possible only by the happy union of two irreducible forces: the cultural department of the Alhaurín de la Torre City Council, the sole and most faithful financier of this adventure, and the joyful music-loving spirit of a scientist with deep humanistic roots, Antonio Heredia Bayona, professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the UMA and coordinator of every edition of the series since its inception in 2005.

To celebrate such a propitious anniversary, the concert last Saturday, May 17th, presented, as a tribute, the same program performed on a day in May of the distant founding year of 2005: a symbolic remembrance of the genesis. The Granada Quartet, a regular ensemble at these indispensable musical springs in Alhaurín, splendidly performed two classical works from the repertoire. In the somber and harrowing 'Quartet No. 8' by Shostakovich—a 'spécialité maison' of this group, which has performed the entirety of the Russian composer's quartets in concert—they masterfully conveyed, with a wise dosage of timing, dynamics, and timbres, the atmosphere of desolation, latent insurgency, and exile of this gripping piece. On the other end, the friendly and bustling 'American Quartet' by Dvorak, I would highlight the warm lyricism infused into the second movement, that sort of 'Czech blues', and the rhythmic illumination of the final 'Vivace', with its dance spirit that the musicians of the Granada Quartet radiated to an enthralled audience.

Ludwig Hohl wrote: "The greatest, who are the loners, trust in the world." We too, who are not great, but occasionally feel loneliness and the necessary solace of music, trust that the rare blessing of this series will persist for at least another twenty years, as an example of decency, exquisite planning, and generosity.