Guess who were in the jury when the first Filipino piano prodigy Nena del Rosario Villanueva won the piano competition at age 12 leading to her debut with New York Philharmonic at the Carnegie Hall in the early 50s?
They are Arthur Rubinstein, Rudolf Serkin, Vladimir Horowitz,Abram Chains, Olin Downes, Leonard Rose and Jascha Heifetz!
In the same manner, the 34-member board of judges when Cecile Licad won the Leventritt Gold Medal in 1981 includes Leonard Bernstein, Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern, Lorin Maazel, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Mischa Schneider, Gary Graffman and Nathan Milstein.
Indeed the musical life and times of Villanueva and Licad are closely intertwined coming as they did in the same distinguished school, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
NENA – Remembering Nena del Rosario-Villanueva
The musical life of Nena del Rosario Villanueva will be recalled in a special concert at the Manila Pianos on September 22, 2 p.m. with special lecture on her life and works by Dr. Alegria Ferrer.
The event is called NENA – Remembering Nena del Rosario-Villanueva. Featured artists are pianists Danica Mae Antazo, Pauline Aguila with a special number from Ms. Elnora Halili. Other Filipino artists — Jovianney Emmanuel Cruz, Margarita Gianelli and Rene Dalandan – are joining the tribute with a performance on September 22, 5:30 p.m. at the Klavierhaus in New York.
A Gawad CCP awardee in the arts in the field of music, Villanueva is the country’s first piano prodigy and the first Filipino pianist to gain acceptance at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she earned her Artist’s Diploma in 1956.
Dr. Ferrer’s lecture will most likely highlight Villanueva’s journey from Iloilo City where her mother, Gertrudes Hautea del Rosario, was her first music teacher.
That journey started in the year of her birth on September 22, 1935 ended when she passed away on June 4, 2021. She was 85.
She studied under the famous Russian pedagogue Isabelle Vengerova. She had master classes with the famous Vladimir Horowitz. At age 12, she made her Carnegie Hall debut after winning a New York Times- sponsored piano competition.
Back in Manila in the late 50s into the ’60s, she was the toast of the music world from Manila to Spain and other places.
In the new millennium, her last performances happened in various venues from Francisco Santiago Hall in Makati to the Cultural Center of the Philippines. among others.
The post-war Sunday Post Magazine noted that while most girls her age played with dolls, she was already interpreting Bach, Chopin and Beethoven “with an effortless grace and assurance that would turn the head of a professional pianist four times her age.”
The turning point was her farewell concert at the UST Gymnasium on February 24, 1946.
Star pupil at Curtis Institute
Accepted in Curtis Institute, she became star pupil when she won a competition that paved the way for her orchestral debut with the New York Philharmonic- Symphony under conductor Igor Buketoff playing Mozart Concerto in D Minor.
She was frequent guest in the “Music Talent in Our Schools” series.
Another turning point was her Carnegie Hall debut at age 12.
Virgilio Joven of the Manila Times wrote of that performance: “The Filipina pianist lived up to and beyond the expectations of New York critics whose reception was unanimous and recalled impressions of her in previous appearances as “clean, accurate, fluent and totally sensitive.”
Her mentors and inspirations
In one of her last interviews, Villanueva talked about her Russian teacher Isabelle Vengerova and her favorite musicians namely Myra Hess, Rudolf Serkin, and Horowitz, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy.
She acknowledged her mother — Gertrudis Hautea del Rosario (a student of MSO founder Alexander Lippay and a graduate of the UP Conservatory of Music) — was a born teacher and was one of the first graduates of the UP Conservatory of Music under MSO founder, Dr. Alexander Lippay.
She recalled the concerts at UST, La Consolacion, even in the movie theaters and the ruins and the opening of the FEU Auditorium. “When I came back in 1949, the times had settled down somewhat and there was a new (or restored) hall. It was good to play where one was not distracted by a vendor peddling balut or hear honking car horns, and it was air-conditioned. I have many good memories of the times at FEU. Life then was a little more genteel. It was the custom to ask daughters and patrons to usher in the audience. At the time, the FEU Auditorium was the cultural center.”
In a eulogy after the funeral Mass June 5, 2021, the pianist’s brother, Mariano del Rosario III, summed up 85 years of his sister’s life. “At age 11, she played during the Independence Day celebration, then observed on July 4, 1946. At age 11, she entered Curtis and debuted at Carnegie Hall at age 12, after winning a competition. Nena and I are 12 years apart in age. I remember when I was growing up, and when Mom would teach Nena, I’d sit at the top of the stairs watching them for hours. My mom also tried to teach me to play the piano, and the best I could muster was Beethoven’s Für Elise.”
Moreover, the late pianist was determined to live other lives. In the end, she found her other voices as wife, mother and grandmother.
(For inquiries on the September 22 musical tribute to Nena De Rosario-Villanueva, contact Gracie at 0917- 800-9357.)
