The author with Cecile Licad, Gerard Salonga and grandson Emman at the Manila Pen.
Cecile Licad started the first two months of 2020 on the right track with standing ovation in Ohio for her Mozart concerto and another one for her Bach concerto in Seattle.
Before going on stage in Seattle, she learned of Kobe Bryant’s death. Temporarily she was unsettled because her son Otavio called and he was devastated.
What to do with news of death before a performance?
As she was won’t to do, she channeled the image of the basketball star crashing down a California mountain in Bach’s larghetto movement which had a melancholy dance form associated with lament.
Then she got another standing ovation.
In the middle of the pandemic, I got in touch to see how the country’s greatest pianist was doing.
Like everyone else, she was downhearted by the turn of events. Her Brahms concerto in Maryland was ultimately cancelled and the rest of future performances followed.
In so many words, she was down like everyone else.
This was one challenge she couldn’t handle easily. She was asked to come home and perform in some private events but she said no. “I cannot perform in this state of mind,” said she.
We did not lose everything, I told her.
We still have your music.
A long pause.
Ok. I will go back to practicing.
In the middle of the pandemic, I got to reflect on my life and times with Cecile Licad.
I met her at the Cagsawa Church Ruins in 1975 before her Albay recital.
In her recital at the St. Agnes Academy that followed, I saw a fourteen-year-old playing like a mature seasoned performer.
I remember hearing the PNR train hooting in the middle of Ravel’s Sonatina. An architect friend left the recital hall stunned by the performance. Outside, he said he thought he saw flowers in the school grounds dance during the performance.
It was my first Licad experience. A good thing I taped the performance and aired some excerpts in a radio program with my commentaries.
Before the year 1975 was over, I joined the musical Rebustillo family in Albay watching another Licad concert this time at the CCP. Then CCP president Lucrecia Kasilag took care of our theater passes.
To be sure, 1975 was the year I first set foot at the CCP and it was my second Licad exposure this time with an orchestra.
I remember writing about the event in Pilipino Express (sister publication of Daily Express) then later in Panorama of Manila Bulletin.
I realized there was no turning back writing about the arts.
Although I was still based in Albay in the late 70s, I could commute to Manila to watch concerts using my PNR train passes courtesy of PNR manager Col. Nick Jimenez, father of Inquirer’s Letty Magsanoc.
From 1975 to 1979, all I did was write for Manila Bulletin as a correspondent and watched all the concerts at the CCP courtesy of Tita King then the CCP president. The turning point in 1979 was watching a San Francisco Opera production of Tosca starring no less than Placido Domingo.
In 1980, I decided to resettle in Manila as managing editor of CCP’s Arts Monthly and part of the PR staff.
By then, I had easy access to all great performances not just by Licad but with other great artists as well.
Five years after I met her in Legazpi City, I was already at CCP and enjoying the best of the performing arts.
I was also silent witness to the life and times of Cecile Licad.
At the time, she won the Leventritt Gold Medal in New York, debuted with Boston Symphony in Tanglewood under Seiji Ozawa.
In the 80s, she got married (to Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses), became a mother to Otavio and then I left CCP to do some impresario work.
(In 1984, I ‘debuted’ as impresario at the Manila Metropolitan Theater presenting the celebrated Romanian diva Nelly Miricioiu with the Manila Symphony Orchestra under Sergio Esmilla, Jr.)
In the same decade in 1988, Licad and Meneses opened my Baguio International Music Festival and closed by tenor Otoniel Gonzaga.
With very little experience on piano exposure, I showed Cecile the piano I found in Baguio for her first concert in the summer capital. Bluntly, she told me during a rehearsal break. “Pablo, that’s not a baby grand. That’s a grand fetus.”
When we returned to Baguio during the new millennium, a full grand piano travelled all the way from Manila to Baguio complete with truck and piano tuner.
In the mid-90s, I learned of the pianist’s separation from her cellist husband. I kept quiet about it. I found the courage to write about it a year or two later.
Her famous quote after her standing ovation in Bonn and talking to her mother, Rosario: “I just realized Mama that I don’t need a husband. I only need my music and my son Otavio.”
And so, the rest of the decades found me bringing her all over the place from Manila to Tuguegarao City to Munoz, Nueva Ecija, Ilocos Norte to Bacolod and Davao City, Legazpi City, Tagaytay City, and Dumaguete, among others.
In 2018 when I turned 70, I realized I couldn’t go on bringing classical music to the provinces without exacting a toll on my aging body.
It was then that I thought of doing my last concert tour with Cecile.
In 2017, I found a perfect recital venue at a heritage house called Nelly Garden in Iloilo City.
Although it seats only 200, the ambience was overwhelming and it had a 1929 New York grand piano. I brought up the recital idea to Cecile and she said yes.
It was then that all-Chopin program was conceived in 2018.
First performance was at the Nelly Garden, followed by another one at the Molo Church and another one in SM Iloilo Cinema.
First time I oversaw three recitals in one place with no break.
She took time off from the concert by going to an Iloilo beach with a fan.
I wrote a poem called God On the Beach that went thus:
My friend and I
Never really attempted to find God
In unlikely places.
She found Him in a hospital
Where many years back
Something that looked fatal
Was found somewhere
In her body.
Weeks of endless waiting
For results yielded the good news:
It was false alarm.
Her succeeding recital
Was a virtual thanksgiving concert
And she found God
looking over her shoulders.
She said:
‘I think I was meant to play
Till age 104.’
Two years ago,
She figured in three recitals
In the south that
Had audiences
Cheering with endless ovations.
At the end of the engagements,
She took a break and found herself
Wading through the sea water
Of Iloilo where she once played
As a young girl for the benefit
Of an orphanage.
This is one
Of her rare rendezvous
With nature.
She had a slice of the ocean
All to herself.
The sea was calm.
And the wind blew
At her face
As though it was her
Big moment of solitude.
Then she saw
What looked like
A rosary floating
In the waters
As if by design.
‘I found this floating in the waters
And I thought it looked good
On my wrist,’ she said.
I believe we have not said
Rosaries in our lifetime
Or visited churches
Or joined processions.
We try to find God in her music
That brought her the essential life
As she wanted it.
We had always figured
There must be
A touch of the divine in the audiences
Who are at once hushed
With every note touched
By her hands.
As we reflect on her last
Engagements in the countryside
I thank the heavens
She found God on the beach
With a good slice of sun
And cold wind blowing
On her face.
* * *
Then we moved on to Science City of Munoz in Nueva Ecija, on to Baguio City and the last stop in Roxas City. It was in the last concert that she paid tribute to her teacher, Prof. Rosario Picazo.
In between concerts, I had time to observe the pianist at close range and realized her musical temperament had not waivered a bit. The passion intensified limned with a new sense of maturity that come with age.
After that six concerts in less than two weeks, I knew my energy for concert organizing was waning and it was time to pause and do something else.
In the middle of the pandemic, I realized I have observed 45 years of the musical life of Cecile since 1975, the year we first met.
In 2019, I did my last two farewell concerts at Nelly Garden with other artists while she did her landmark recording of all-Gershwin works with the South Danish Philharmonic Orchestra under Gerard Salonga.
It was then that the virus would cancel the rest of her remaining engagements after Mozart in Ohio and Bach in Seattle in January and February of 2020.
How did these 45 years observing the Licad life look like?
It was first-rate music-making all the way.
I saw her human side as well, her vulnerability as a mother and how she transforms life’s pains into pieces of sounds in the realm of magnificence.
This month, I turn 72 and she has turned 59.
I remember her writing to my granddaughter on the cover of her book, “Tanya, I hope you take over your Lolo and present me in a concert at age 102.”