BEATRIZ BOIZAN

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

maxresdefaultBeatriz Boizán plays with Pasión

Pasión is the right title for the debut CD of pianist Beatriz Boizán, a young keyboard artist who plays with genuine passion and utmost musical intelligence seventeen compositions by Spanish and Latin American composers.

Insightfully annotated by the artist herself, the CD is neatly packaged and nicely engineered.

The composers and styles represented in this CD span three centuries and as many countries.

From Spain, Ms. Boizán offers two sonatas by the Spanish priest and composer Antonio Soler, whose late-Baroque/early-Classical compositions for the harpsichord evidence an amalgam of influences from Bach to Mozart, distilled into a quintessentially Spanish sound.

The young Cuban-Canadian pianist Beatriz Boizán plays the music of Father Soler with utmost elegance and sobriety.

It is very appropriate to program in this CD six Cuban Danzas. The pianist mines all the languor and island flavor contained in these miniatures that the 19th century Cuban composer Ignacio Cervantes penned during the five years he lived and concertized in Paris.

Accenting where accents belong, syncopating when syncopation is needed, letting go when emotion is called for, and never wallowing in salon sentimentality, Beatriz Boizán’s understanding of the spirit and style of this masterful miniaturist is simply perfect.

Isaac Albeniz’ music challenges most pianists in both anticipated and unexpected ways. The technical hurdles are surely there, but that’s just the half of it.

Having lived and composed during an era in which the Romanticism of the 19th century was quickly giving elbow room to the new sonorities of Debussy, Albeniz was making the French master’s harmonic explorations very much his own. Understanding the importance of subtlety, Ms. Boizán delivers a chiaroscuro interpretation of Evocación and El Puerto then unabashedly takes on the high drama of Corpus Christi en Sevilla with vigor and spirituality.

If there is any doubt left as to this pianist’s chameleonic capability of transforming her playing from composer to composer, let one sit and take in the three dances by Antonio Ginastera towards the end of the CD.

Our artist can summon uncanny agility in Danza del Viejo Boyero, melancholia in Danza de la Moza Donosa and uncommon raw energy in Danza del Gaucho Matrero, all the while being in complete control of the Argentine composer’s propensity for bitonality and tricky changing rhythms.

Ernesto Lecuona is without doubt Cuba’s most famous composer. Even if one does not at once remember his name, the titles of some of his compositions will surely jug one’s memory: three Lecuona evergreens featured in Ms. Boizán’s album.

At the end of the CD, Beatriz Boizán returns to the sounds that all of us Cubans carry as part of our musical DNA, performing Lecuona’s Malagueña with uncanny abandon and primal Cuban pasión.

It is a stunning ending to a debut album by a young artist about whom we ought to be hearing much good very soon.

Rafael de Acha
http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com All About the Arts

The essentials:
Pasión
Beatriz Boizán, piano
Produced, recorded and mixed by Su Goldberg for Galano Records
Available directly from the artist at  http://www.beatrizboizan.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”