In commemoration of Women’s Month, world-acclaimed Filipina pianist Cecile Licad will be presented with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra in a special concert Tuesday, March 19th, 7:00 PM, at the Metropolitan Theater.
Licad was last heard at the Met in 1989 with Brazilian Tchaikovsky gold medalist cellist Antonio Meneses.
Described as “a pianist’s pianist by The New Yorker, Licad is the first Filipino recipient of the Leventritt Gold Medal, the same award that went to piano icons Van Cliburn and Gary Graffman.
A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Merit by President Corazon C. Aquino and Pamana sa Pilipino Award by President Benigno Aquino, Jr. Licad is also recipient of the Gawad CCP in the field of Music.
The invitational event brings together a distinguished audience in a special program consisting of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23 with Licad as soloist and Brahms Symphony No. 2 with the PPO under the baton of Maestro Grzegorz Novak.
Invited to the concert are dignitaries from the Senate, government officials, members of the diplomatic corps, business leaders, socio-civic stalwarts, educators from state colleges and universities, young artists, and music students from various universities.
The Women’s Month concert is spearheaded by Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda, Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Culture and the Arts, in collaboration with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) with its Chairman Ino Manalo, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) headed by Chairman Jaime Laya, and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra Society, Inc. led by the late President Zenaida Tantoco.
Licad’s recordings received high ratings from music critics one of whom raved over her all-Gottchalk CD: “Cecile Licad may have been groomed under Rudolf Serkin’s exacting tutelage, but her visceral, exuberant Gottschalk playing evokes Vladimir Horowitz’s diabolical art.”
Described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “one of the the great flaming talents that comes along one or two times in every generation,” Licad is teaming up for the first time with the new music director of the PPO, Maestro Grzegorz Nowak, a first prize winner of the Ernest Ansermet International Conducting Competition in Geneva.