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The Music of Joaquín Rodrigo – From a Moon Landing to the Maestro at Aranjuez

Jan. 25, 2024

This month, the music of Joaquín Rodrigo appears in a variety of educational and cultural programs. On January 10, the Apollo 15 Hub released a fascinating film titled Galileo's Moon. This 55-minute film, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 15's moon landing, was produced by the Apollo 15 crew and associates to record some historical highlights of the mission as well as to share their personal experiences during the exploration of the Hadley Apennine site on the Moon during 1971. The film was produced privately from archival material retrieved from the period of the Apollo program. The final minutes of the film fittingly feature Rodrigo's A la busca del más allá for orchestra alongsidestunning archival images of the moon. "In search of the beyond" is the English title of Joaquín Rodrigo’s symphonic poem composed in 1977. During a trip to the USA, Rodrigo visited the headquarters of the US space agency NASA in Texas. When he was subsequently commissioned by the Houston Symphony Orchestra for the US bicentenary, he decided to write a piece about the human exploration of space. The work begins and ends with a long roll on suspended cymbals; it emerges from nowhere and disappears, comments Rodrigo, ‘as if lost somewhere in space – in the other world.'

 
A la busca del más allá (In Search of What Lies Beyond)/Joaquín Rodrigo/Castile and Leon Symphony Orchestra/Max Darman Bragado

Galileo's Moon can be viewed in its entirety here.

Additionally, 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of Joaquín Rodrigo's death as well as the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great Spanish soprano, Victoria de los Angeles for whom Rodrigo composed a number of songs. A tribute concert in memory of de los Angeles was hosted on January 16 at the Palau de la Música Catalana – the same concert hall where the Concierto de Aranjuez was premiered in 1940. The program included Rodrigo's Tríptic de Mossèn Cinto, performed by Montserrat Seró and the Orquestra Simfònica Victoria de los Ángeles (OSVA), led by conductor Pedro Pardo. Victoria de los Angeles premiered this orchestral song cycle in 1946 in the same hall with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Barcelona, under the baton of Juán Pich Santasusana.


Rodrigo's Triptic de Mossèn Cinto performed by Victoria de los Ángeles in 1992

On January 25 the Spanish National Tourism Fair (FITUR) featured the figure of Joaquín Rodrigo in the Aranjuez stand, with a short solo guitar performance of the Concierto de Aranjuez, illustrated with photos and videos of Rodrigo in Aranjuez. Additionally, on January 11 the Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, SGAE) held a workshop on contemporary music during which Cecilia León, granddaughter of Joaquín Rodrigo appeared as a representative of Ediciones Joaquín Rodrigo. 

To learn more about Joaquín Rodrigo, visit joaquin-rodrigo.com and schott-music.com. 

Joaquín Rodrigo
A la busca del más allá (1977)
for orchestra
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15'

Tríptic de Mossèn Cinto (1935)
for soprano and orchestra
text (Sp) by Jacinto Verdaguer
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12'

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