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Arturo Márquez wrote "Fandango" at the prompting of violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. "I had known this music since I was a child, listening to it in the cinema, on the radio and listening to my father, a mariachi violinist."
In 2018, after violinist Anne Akiko Meyers heard Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2, which she describes as “music that made my heart and soul dance,” she sought to realize her dream of helping to commission a mariachi-inspired violin concerto.
Soon thereafter, she approached Márquez, who recognized a kindred spirit. “He shared with me that his late father was a mariachi violinist,” she said, and “he had been waiting to write this music that stirred in his heart for decades.”
He composed Fandango, which had its world premiere at the Hollywood Bowl on Aug. 24, 2021, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, and with Meyers as soloist.
Since then, Marquez’s Fandango has thrilled audiences from Mexico City to Carnegie Hall. Of the recording made by Dudamel leading the L.A. Phil and her at Walt Disney Hall in October 2022, Meyers said, “It will undoubtedly touch your heart and have you fall in love with his music, much like I did.”
That recording, titled “Fandango” (2023), released on the Apple-owned Platoon label, won two 2024 Latin Grammys, for best classical album and best contemporary classical composition.
Meyers will join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under Giancarlo Guerrero, for concerts Oct. 15-17 featuring Marquez’s Fandango, along with Fandangos, Roberto Sierra’s contemporary meditation on two 18th-century works and Elgar’s Enigma Variations.
In his composer’s note, Márquez reflects on the history of the fandango. "Known worldwide as a popular Spanish dance, the fandango is specifically [known] as one of the fundamental parts (palos) of flamenco. Since its appearance around the 18th century, various composers such as Santiago de Murcia, Domenico Scarlatti, Luigi Boccherini, Padre Antonio Soler, W.A. Mozart, among others, have included fandango in concert music.
"Immediately upon its appearance in Spain, the fandango moves to the Americas, where it acquires a personality, according to the land that adopts and cultivates it. Today, we can still find it in countries such as Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico, in the latter and specifically in the state of Veracruz and in the Huasteca area, including part of seven states in eastern Mexico. There, the fandango acquires a tinge different from the Spanish genre; for centuries, it has served as a special festival for musicians, singers, poets and dancers.
"In 2018, I received an email from violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, a wonderful musician, where she proposed the possibility of writing a work for violin and orchestra that had to do with Mexican music. The proposal interested and fascinated me, not only because of Maestra Meyers’ emotional aesthetic proposal, but also because of my admiration for her musicality, virtuosity and above all, for her courage in proposing a concerto so out of the ordinary.
"I had already tried, unsuccessfully, to compose a violin concerto some 20 years earlier with ideas that were based on the Mexican fandango. I had known this music since I was a child, listening to it in the cinema, on the radio and listening to my father, a mariachi violinist (Arturo Márquez Sr.), interpret huastecos and mariachi music. Also, since the ’90s I have admired the fandango in various parts of Mexico. I would like to mention that the violin was my first instrument when I was 14 years old; curiously, I studied it in La Puente, California, in Los Angeles County, where fortunately this work will be premiered with the wonderful Los Angeles Philharmonic, under Gustavo Dudamel. It’s a beautiful coincidence, as I have no doubt that fandango was danced in California in the 18th and 19th centuries.
"Fandango for violin and orchestra is formally a concerto in three movements: Folia Tropical, Plegaria (Prayer), a chaconne, and Fandanguito.
"The first movement, Folia Tropical, has the form of the sonata or traditional classical concert: introduction, exposition with its two themes, bridge, development and recapitulation. Folias are ancient dances that come from Portugal and Spain. However, the root of this word takes us to the French word folie: madness.
"The second movement, Plegaria, pays tribute to the huapango mariachi, together with the Spanish fandango, both in its rhythmic and emotional parts. One of the palos of Andalusian flamenco is precisely a malagueña, and Mexico also has a huapango honoring Málaga [a city and province in Spain]. I do not use traditional themes, but there is a healthy attempt to unite both worlds; that is why this movement is the fruit of an imaginary marriage between the huapango-mariachi and Pablo Sarasate, Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albeniz, three of my beloved and admired Spanish composers.
"It is also a freely treated chaconne. The chaconne, as well as the sarabande, were two dances forbidden by the Spanish Inquisition in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, long before they became part of European Baroque music.
"The third movement, Fandanguito, is a tribute to the famous fandangito huasteco. The music of this region is played by violin, jarana huasteca (small rhythm guitar) and huapanguera (low guitar with five orders of strings). This third movement is a totally free elaboration of the huasteco fandanguito, but it maintains many of its rhythmic characteristics. It demands a great virtuosity from the soloist, and it is the music that I have kept in my heart for decades.
“For every composer, it is a real challenge to compose new works from old forms, especially when this repertoire is part of the fundamental structure of classical music. Composing this in the 2020 pandemic was not easy, due to the huge human suffering. Undoubtedly my experience with this work has been intense and highly emotional, but I have to mention that I have preserved my seven capital principles: tonality, modality, melody, rhythm, imaginary folk tradition, harmony and orchestral color.”
