Voted audience favorite at this year’s Gurwitz International Piano Competition, pianist Tatiana Dorokhova returned to San Antonio in October, 2024 for Musical Bridges Around the World to dazzle a standing-room only, filled-to-the-brim audience at San Fernando Cathedral with a performance of Aaron Prado’s piece, “El Colibrí y la Cempasúchil.”
Prado was commissioned by The Gurwitz to write the piece, with instructions to draw upon the sounds of South Texas, including mariachi. It should be noted that pianos are not normally found in a mariachi ensemble.
“That became a challenge,” Prado told the crowd at the concert. “But I in a good sense! It was something to think [about]… how can the piano be part of that?”
Prado’s piece is scored for strings, percussion, trumpet and piano, and is based on an ancient Aztec story of two young lovers who long to be reunited in another life after death. She becomes a marigold, and he, a hummingbird.
“The main theme is transmogrified through many different folk traditions of not only Mexico, but then Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, and a little bit of jazz in there as well, so a little bit of United States flavor,” Prado explained. “Each performer is invited to either improvise or prepare something that they think would be appropriate [during a cadenza]. And so when it came time to perform, each finalist had their own something to say. And I think a big part of the reason that Tatiana won the Audience Award for was her incredible cadenza that she plays at that point in the piece.”
You can hear Aaron Prado’s piece, as well as two Russian favorites on this program, by using the audio player at the top of the page. The Russian works Tatiana Dorokhova brought to the stage were Mily Balakirev’s “Islamey,” routinely cited as one of the most difficult pieces for any pianist to play, and the mammoth-length “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky, which Tatiana Dorokhova says “illustrates different facets of the human soul.”
