“She was like Durga, the Hindu goddess with many arms, playing the piano with dexterity and possessing incredibly cat-like reflexes. From thunderous fortissimo to feather-like pianissimo, she awed from start to finish and yielded to the audience’s numerous encores. Was it 7?”
So did islander Gerry Rubio describe the performance of incomparable Filipino pianist Cecile Licad on the last leg of her “Sharing the Gift of Music” concert series at E-Crown Hotel & Resort last Oct. 11, 2025.
Such was Licad’s power in commanding the piano that most of the provincial PESO manager’s post focused on the varied audience’s breach of concert etiquette midway during the pieces or short pauses between movements.
The multi-awarded piano virtuoso now based in the US never broke stride in striking her notes from memory, treating the applause, audible whispers as well as the occasional couch and clearing of throats as if were nothing.
Even the late Pablo Arcilla Tariman, the artist’s confidante and impresario to whom Licad dedicated the one-night performance, could have grimaced at the audience’s behavior as he had always explained the rules before his concerts began in various venues in Virac in the past.
Aside from arriving on time and turning off phones, concert goers are advised to be silent, put off talking even in whispers, bother people around them and clap in the midst of the piece.
The audience is supposed to withhold clapping while the musician are still “in position” (the pianist still has her hands on the keyboard).
During Saturday’s concert, a guard repeatedly cautioned members of the audience from taking videos of the performance.
But he probably thought it best not to interfere when Governor Patrick Alain T. Azanza could not resist the chance to record Licad performing Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer, Rose Leaf Rag, Stop Time Rag and Easy Winners, some of them recognizable tunes from movies mostly in the mid-70s to the late 80s.
With Aboy gone, fans of the concerts that he staged with no reasonable expectation of income but only grateful applause are wondering who will inherit his dogged determination to bring classical music to the awareness of people in faraway corners of the Philippine archipelago.
Farewell, Pablo Arcilla Tariman! May you forever enjoy heavenly music where you are now!
*****
Those who were able to catch the Licad concert, from the gown-clad ladies to the ordinary abacaleros and tricycle drivers, owe their once-in-a-lifetime musical experience to Gov. Azanza and the provincial government of Catanduanes, E-Crown Hotel & Resort’s Edna Segismundo, the Provincial Tourism Office, and the Provincial Information Office.
Without their taking up the chores of staging a concert by no less than an international performer in classical music, Pablo Tariman’s dream of bringing Licad to Catanduanes could have died with him.
The pianist offered her Virac concert her very dear, dear friend Pablo, “a very intuitive and very sensitive person” whom she met when in Albay she was just 13 years old and since then “dedicated his life passionately just writing for arts, music, films, (and) culture.”
*****
A MOST EXPENSIVE PARROT. A guy walks into a pet store wanting a parrot. The store clerk shows him two beautiful ones out on the floor.
“This one’s $5,000 and the other is $10,000.” the clerk said.
“Wow! What does the $5,000 one do?”
“This parrot can sing every aria Mozart ever wrote.”
“And the other?” said the customer.
“This one can sing Wagner’s entire Ring cycle. There’s another one in the back room for $30,000.”
“Holy moly! What does that one do?”
“Nothing that I can tell, but the other two parrots call him ‘Maestro’.”