The Spectacular Cecile Licad

So this post is almost two months late but last June 29, I took my mom to watch Cecile Licad perform in CCP in her concert aptly called "The Pianist's Pianist". The first time I saw her perform live was when she shared the stage with Lea Salonga and Lisa Macuja in last year's The Legends and the Classics. This time, the spotlight was just on her.

photo from www.philippineconcerts.com

It was a brilliant show that demonstrated Cecile's genius with a piano. She was backed up by the ABS-CBN Philharmonic Orchestra with Gerard Salonga as conductor. Her repertoire included two pieces from Hungarian composer Franz Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 and the Totentanz. She also performed three encores. One of her encores was Manchega, a lively piece by American composer Gottschalk. This video is of a performance in 2003 of the same song:

video uploaded in youtube by tiklado07

As we stepped out of the theater, we noticed what seemed like a meet-and-greet area by the staircase. We confirmed that it was, so I told my mom to fall in line to get an autograph. Thankfully we were quick about it because as soon as my mom got in line (she was around the 4th or 5th person from the front), a whole horde of people queued up right behind her.

The biggest shame about my experience was that I organized and attended a tree planting event earlier that day in Real, Quezon and I had only one hour of sleep. As such, I ended up dozing off for a short period of time in the first half of the show. Damn! Thankfully, the food and coffee I had during intermission gave me enough energy to stay fully awake in the second half. I do recall that as soon as I got home, I fell asleep almost immediately and slept for 14 straight hours! Talk about being massively tired. Hopefully, I get to watch another of Ms. Licad's brilliant performances in the future.