MANUEL ENRÍQUEZ: Manantial de Soles, en El Cairo, Egipto (2003)

En el periódico AL-AHRAM WEEKLY, de El Cairo, Egipto:
25 - 31 December 2003 Issue No. 670 Culture
Hail the heralds
Mrs. Amal Choucri Catta (writer) is in festive mood

Cairo Symphony Orchestra, conductor Sergio Cárdenas, with the A Capella Choir and soloists Dalia Farouk, Sobhi Bedeir, Mustafa Mohamed and narrator Raouf Messiha. Main Hall, Cairo Opera House, 20 December, 2003, 8pm

Christmas is flourishing at Cairo's Opera House with evergreen trees sparkling with coloured lights at the main entrance and "Merry Christmas, Happy New Year" appearing in bold letters above the main door. In the Main Hall, the Cairo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sergio Cárdenas, gave the audience a superb version of Carmina Burana.
It was the second Burana this year. The first took place on 29 March, in the framework of the 20th Century Music Festival, with Sergio Cárdenas as guest conductor and soloists Taheya Shams El-Din, soprano, Hisham El-Guindy, tenor and Andrea Martin, baritone, and the A Capella Choir directed by Maya Gvinneria.
Carl Orff's scenic cantata for choir, soloists and orchestras will always attract a respectable audience. Like Beethoven's "Ninth", Verdi's "Requiem", Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" or Verdi's "Aida", it is one of those rare pieces that will run and run. This time Sergio Cárdenas was again at the head of the orchestra, not as guest conductor but as musical director and principal conductor of Cairo Symphony Orchestra. And once more his performance was remarkable. He has his own rhythmic conception: his pace is dynamic and he seems to dislike loitering vocalists or slow instrumentalists. Soloists had been changed for Saturday's performance, presenting soprano Dalia Farouk, tenor Sobhi Bedeir and baritone Mustafa Mohamed.
That night the concert started with two premieres: Khaled Shukri's Impressions from the Third World, and Manuel Enríquez's Spring of the Suns, for soprano, narrator and orchestra. Shukri graduated from the Cairo Conservatoire Composition Department in 1987 and has subsequently won a number of national and international prizes, among them the National Award for Creativity and a two-year scholarship at the Egyptian Academy in Rome.
Mexican composer Manuel Enríquez was a member of the group Nueva Musica, founded in 1957 by Joaquin Gutierrez-Heras. Enríquez's Spring of Suns is an ambiguous, rather sombre work, plunging the listener into the enigmatic world of outer space, of unknown universes, of the birth and death of multitudes of suns and planets. There is a strange dialogue between the soprano and the narrator, evoking images of darkness and overwhelming feelings. Melody comes in rapid, discontinued sequences, while the soprano, brilliantly performed by Dalia Farouk, goes through all kinds of vocal acrobatics required by the composer. Spring of Suns relies particularly on sound effects and percussion: an interesting, if by now curiously dated, composition well-managed by the orchestra, the soloists, the choir and the maestro.
The latter did an excellent job conducting both this and Shukri's Impressions of the Third World. Both compositions, however, were received lukewarmly by the audience, all waiting for Burana. Excellently performed and beautifully sung by choir and soloists, it received a seemingly endless standing ovation

MANANTIAL DE SOLES (audio) está disponible en el sitio de Radio Nacional de España:

www.rtve.es/podcast/SARCHI.xml
1208279389801.mp3
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Se transmitió el 15 abr '08, 12:09 p.m.

'Manantial de soles',
Título: Manantial de Soles. Autor: Manuel Enríquez sobre un texto de Octavio Paz.
Solista: Margarita Pruneda (soprano), José Antonio Alcaraz (narrador).
Orquesta Filarmónica del Bajío (México).
Director: Sergio Cárdenas.
(Grabación del año 1991, supervisada por el compositor)