Cecile Licad in between landslides and stormy weather
It was in August 1975 in Legazpi City that I first saw Cecile Licad (then age 14) perform for the first time at the St. Agnes Academy.
When she performs this Sept. 24 at the Manila Metropolitan Theater with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO) under Maestro Grzegorz Nowak, I will have logged in a total of 50 years watching and following the country’s most celebrated pianist. This concert is presented by the PPO Society Inc. headed by chairman Anton Huang, and sponsored by Rustan’s and Cartier.
Apart from focusing on her chosen repertoire, what keeps her busy before concerts, especially if she is performing in the countryside after her Manila concert?
One, she monitors what kind of pianos will be made available to her. On top of that, her most reliable piano tuner, Danny Lumabi, should be around for all concert engagements.
The first time I got Licad to perform in an outreach was in 1989 in Baguio City with her cellist husband Antonio Meneses (gold medalist in the Tchaikovsky Competition).
At the time, my piano knowledge was not so reliable and I ended up making do with the only available instrument in a Baguio university.
When Licad saw the instrument before rehearsals, she told me quite frankly, “Pablo, the piano you secured for me is not a grand piano. It is a grand fetus!”
As we prepare for another series of outreach concerts in Baguio City, Pinto Gallery in Antipolo City, the MiraNila, Iloilo City, and Catanduanes, I’d like to recall several episodes involving encounters with good and bad pianos in the provinces and the candid, if heated, exchanges in between.
For the 1997 outreach concert in Legazi City, a full grand piano traveled from Manila to Albay.
We had no major piano problem in Cebu but when we sailed to Dumaguete City for a concert at the university auditorium, an old but full Steinway grand greeted us and it sounded like a harpsicord.
My fault was that I did not check the piano before the concert (at the time, I could not afford a touring piano tuner).
I looked around Dumaguete’s beautiful houses for replacements pianos but their owners would not part with theirs, even if I aimed a gun at them.
The pianist planned to cancel the concert. The pianist’s mother (Mrs. Rosario Licad) pleaded on my behalf and told her daughter, “Cecile, maawa ka naman kay Pablo. Just imagine the tickets he has to reimburse if you cancel.”
There was a candid, if fiery, exchange between her and the head of the music department. In the end, she agreed to perform only if I made a speech before the concert asking the university board to buy a new piano for subsequent concerts. “Pablo I don’t know how you will do it but send my message: the university auditorium needs a good piano.”
In later feedback, I heard one half of the members of the board didn’t like my pre-concert speech but the other half agreed with me—that the university auditorium with its good acoustics needed an equally good piano.
In 2004, after Cecile performed in Tuguegarao City and Baguio City, filmmaker and now National Artist for Film Marilou Diaz-Abaya suggested that we stay overnight in a Banaue Hotel to see the rice terraces.
The sight was glorious. But on the day we were supposed to return to Manila (Cecile was scheduled to fly to New York next day for another concert), landslides blocked the way to the nearest air strip after a night of heavy rain. The pianist and her company had to wade through knee-deep mud before we reached the airport. There was no way she could reach Manila on time for her flight back to New York the next day. A helicopter courtesy of the presidential daughter flew her and her son to Manila just on time for her flight back to the US.
In one outreach concert in Sitio Remedios Resort in Currimao town in Ilocos Norte, the piano pedal gave way in the middle of Mozart’s Fantasy. The piano tuner made a quick dive underneath the piano and quickly restored the pedal—with the pianist continuing the performance as if nothing had happened.
One of my last outreach concerts in one resort in Cavite was probably my most dramatic.
I prepared the venue way ahead of time. While the pianist rehearsed, I checked the seating arrangement.
The concert preparations went well, with Cecile telling me, “Pablo, how did you find this excellent venue?”
With a good venue and a good piano Bosendorfer piano courtesy of Ray Sison’s ROS Music Center, Cecile said she would take a good rest and then asked me to knock on her door two hours before the performance.
But as the pianist was resting, I heard the sound of fire trucks. The venue I had prepared earlier was on fire. My panic was not so much about the venue, but about the thought of a grand piano costing millions being gutted in that fire.
The fire was temporarily contained, but we could no longer use the venue. With a concert happening in two hours, I inspected an alternative place, found it good enough and we started rearranging chairs.
Irene M. Araneta and the late Nedy Tantoco wondered how the concert could go on with fire trucks all over the place. I breathed deeply and told myself: I can’t panic. Do what you can manage.
I told the pianist we had to move the concert to another venue close to the original function room. “I tested the acoustics. It’s not bad. Ray (Sison) said it was better than the damaged venue.”
Probably to soothe a tense and nervous concert organizer and an equally nervous audience, Cecile gave the concert everything she had. After she had played Chopin’s Polonaise Fantasie in A Flat and Grand Polonaise Brilliante, the audience was beside itself with excitement.
The new venue allowed them to be just a few feet away from the piano.
The closing number was the fiery Dante sonata by Liszt. It was a piece that, in some sections, conjured images of inferno.
It was a hair-raising performance that drew several standing ovations and endless encore pieces.
But while doing one encore number after another, the original venue had apparently caught fire again and the place we were at was in dangerously close proximity to it!
After the hurried autograph-signing, the audience fled to safety. Rustan’s Nedy Tantoco, meanwhile, led Cecile to her car while I worried about paid tickets for the ticket buyers who didn’t show up, perhaps because they thought the event had been canceled because of the fire.
In 2014 while doing her outreach recital at St. Benedict’s Chapel in Ayala West Grove in Silang Cavite, the weather advisory revealed Cavite, including Metro Manila, was under Signal No. 3 for Typhoon Glenda.
From outside the chapel, we could hear the winds howl with heavy rains battering the chapel. She finished the recital and, as usual, was greeted with a standing ovation.
As we head for home, I asked someone how he found the concert. He said, “I think Typhoon Cecile was stronger.”
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Cecile Licad will be the soloist of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra under Maestro Novac on Sept. 24, 6:30 p.m. at the Manila Metropolitan Theater. She will play two concertos: Chopin No. 2 and Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 2. For Met concert tickets, call 0917-5708301. Her outreach concerts cover Baguio Country Club (Sept. 27, 6 p.m.); Pinto Gallery in Antipolo City (Sept. 28, 6 p.m.); MiraNila (Oct. 2, 6:30 p.m.); University of the Philippines Visayas in Iloilo City (Oct. 6) and Molo Church (Oct. 7, 6 p.m.) and Virac, Catanduanes (Oct. 11, 4 p.m.). Her solo program: Piano Sonata No. 14 (Moonlight) in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 by Beethoven; Carnaval Op. 9 by Schumann, St. Francis Walking on the Water by Liszt, Three Pieces by Joplin and Ballade No. 1 in G Minor by Chopin.
