By: Jullie Y. Daza
UPON the shutdown of that grand marvel of architecture known as Philamlife Bldg. in Manila, lovers of classical music bade a melancholy goodbye to its venerable concert hall, better known as Philamlife auditorium, where great, popular, beloved, and mediocre musicians once performed.
The auditorium was a landmark even in its early years in the ‘50s. Performers and audiences liked it for its superior acoustics and convenient location, before the city grew to its mega-density and dimensions. So it was with a sense of achievement that this perennial music student discovered that out there in Bonifacio Global City, a Malaysian-owned bank has built a theater within its four-storey building. At the 2015 price of P600,000/sqm, its lack of height should make it the costliest structure in the neighborhood.
There was no one from Maybank who could tell me more about the theater the night pianist Ingrid Sala Santamaria and Manila Symphony Orchestra sort of “inaugurated” the 10-month-old theater – the Oct. 14 concert was the first classical music event to be held there – but there it was, a cozy little clam to seat 500, including two tiers of balcony seats. After the concert, ISS and Jeffrey Solares of MSO Foundation rated the acoustics a thumbs-up.
Now that the stage has been set, so to speak, a wave of raves is due ISS, terrorist of the pianoforte, and MSO under guest conductor Christophe Poppen. ISS, who only 40 days earlier had wowed her audience at Meralco theater with Rachmaninoff’s and Tchaikovsky’s most famous works, took several curtain calls for her Brahms’ no. 2, a rarely heard masterpiece because, now I know why, it’s extremely difficult to play, a storm of impossible arpeggios of chords amid the composer’s sadistic streak of turning out delightful tricks and surprises.
To their credit, the youthful orchestra, despite only one rehearsal, was able to keep up with vim and vigor. Of the four-movement concerto that took 49 minutes to play, ISS remarked, “It’s humongous!”
As her daughter Crispy tells it, “she was sweating” as she practised to play from memory in four weeks. As ISS would say, no pain no gain.
