Pianist dazzles audience anew

RAUL’S favorites are concertos that fascinate him because of the technical challenge.">RAUL’S favorites are concertos that fascinate him because of the technical challenge.

Between his teaching chores as a university professor of music and his administrative responsibilities as the head of one cultural organization or another, concert pianist Raul Sunico apportions time to sit down in the piano consistently to rehearse for a performance.

Expectedly, on the big day, Raul always dazzles his audience, keeping them glued to their seats, astounded by his virtuoso interpretation of compositions by anyone of the world’s great composers.

Raul’s concert this 26 January, though, takes on an even more special tone as his fans will once again hear him interpret all four concertos of the prodigious Russian composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff, an all-time favorite of his.

A repeat of a unique feat of Raul’s in 2003, this 6 p.m. show, which features an amalgam of concertos that he will interpret under the batons of Philippine Philhamonic Orchestra (PPO) conductors, Yoshikazu Fukumura and Herminigildo Ranera, affirms the pianist’s continuing dexterity in the practice of his art.

Produced by the Sunico Foundation for Arts and Technology (SFAT), the benefit concert intends to raise funds for its education program which supports young, gifted scholars. The foundation is composed of today’s generation of Sunicos who descend from Hilario, Teodoro and Julio Sunico, among them cultural administrator and educator Chingay Lagdameo and engineer businessman and corporate honcho Renato Sunico.

Raul is the chair of the doctoral program in music of St. Paul University in Manila and continues as faculty member at the UST Conservatory of Music. He also holds various positions in socio-cultural organizations, including as vice president of the Friends for Cultural Concerns of the Philippines (FCCP), president of the Klassikal Music Foundation and vice chairman of the international arts organization Federation for Asian Cultural Promotion (FACP).

A former president of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and dean of the UST Conservatory of Music, he has recently resumed his performing activities after retirement from his positions in 2017. His concerts have since taken him to the USA, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Portugal, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon and Japan. He was recently named as a Steinway Artist where he had also recorded for its new Spirio model.

A TOYM (The Outstanding Young Men) awardee for music in 1986, Raul won the silver medal in the Viotti International Piano Competition in Vercelli, Italy.

But if you think of Raul as someone like many wonder boys and girls of Philippine music whose gifts shone early, discovered while tinkering with a musical instrument and producing something that sounded like a Mozart composition, Raul begs to differ from your imagination. He is where he is today because he worked hard at his art.

Like most kids influenced by their peers, Raul decided he wanted to learn how to play the piano because his Sunico cousins, with whom he lived in the same compound on Misericordia, were taking piano lessons.

“It was a case of gaya-gaya, or follow the leader kind of thing,” Raul, who was the youngest of the cousins, now recalls. “I didn’t know what I was getting into. The idea was broached and I said, ‘Ako din (Me too).’”

His first teacher was Maestra Marina Diokno. “She stayed with me for 11 years,” he shares, “From the time I was five years old until 16. That was up to my third year high school.

Miss Diokno would organize student recitals. So my older cousins and I would join them.”

It was during these recitals that his exceptional talent would surface, “but it was a gradual process. We started with the usual do re mi, do re mi. Then, I got to watch students play more advanced pieces that I liked. So I would ask my teacher if I could learn those pieces, too. She never said no. Even if she knew it was a little bit too advanced, she just said, yes, sige. That’s how my interest was built up. And I soon learned the pieces that I liked.”

A PIANO virtuoso, Raul concertizes in various parts of the world. Double Major

An Atenean from his elementary days, Raul was in third year high school when he told Ms Diokno that he wanted to pursue piano in college.

“She passed me on to a teacher at UP, (University of the Philippines) Benedicta Macaisa. She became my teacher during my studies at the UP Conservatory of Music. And I graduated under her,” he shares.

After he finished his Bachelor of Music (Cum Laude honors), he went on to acquire a second degree, this time BS Math. A year after, he capped his state university education with a Master’s in Statistics. “I wanted to take up Music as a degree. For a career, I wanted Mathematics,” he recalls.

His career choice was not farfetched. He won gold medals in Math contests in Ateneo.

Raul’s first job was as a computer programmer at GenBank (later Allied Bank), at the same time that he taught Math in the UP night school. He was soon promoted as a Trust Analyst and by the time he left for New York to pursue musical studies at the Juilliard School, he was the Corporate Planning Supervisor.

Daily Tribune (DT): Tell us about your audition at Juilliard.

Raul Sunico (RS): I performed before a jury.

DT: Did they ring a bell if they didn’t like the way you were playing?

RS: Yes, they rang a bell but that was because you were allotted only five minutes.

Each applicant prepared a program of one and a half hours, a whole recital. We were given a list of what we were supposed to prepare. But once you were inside the jury room, they would choose only certain parts from your program.

Like a member of the jury would say, “Okay, can you please play the beginning of this one first?” So, you’d play it. “Thank you, thank you, now can we hear the second movement of this one?” And so on.

DT: Of course, you were prepared emotionally and all.

RS: I wasn’t too well then because three weeks before I left, I caught hepatitis. In fact, I was on dextrose when I had my farewell concert in the Philippines. I wore sunglasses in my port of entry, Honolulu, because I might end up being quarantined. I had to be rested all the time, but at the same time, I needed to practice for the audition, so that was my dilemma.

RS: Well, we have a warm-up thing. And it was a given that you have memorized your piece already. There was no room for error because it was practically a competition. There were only 20 slots available for 500 applicants.

DT: Can I assume you underwent a different kind of learning? I suppose it was different from the way they taught at UP or UST.

RS: It was different in the sense that at Juilliard, their expectations were much greater. We normally had only two lessons for a piece. They expected you to play at a performance level in the first lesson. There was no room for corrections because it was assumed that the student would read the note correctly and that the timing was right. So, the lesson was of a higher level. And that was weekly.

RS: The first time I met my teacher, she showed me the piece and said that it was going to be our first lesson in the coming week. It was the 80-page Chopin Concerto Number One. It was 80 pages because it included the orchestral part, which I needed to study too. So I memorized the 30-minute piece, only for me to be somewhat surprised because during our first lesson the first half hour was focused only on the first chord. And to think that I practiced the whole piece. She was advising me about the tone, that it should be louder and all. So, she would go, “Yah, that’s right; no, that’s wrong.”

As soon as I reached home, I thought about the lesson, which was about arm movement. So, I said to myself, this arm movement that she insisted on, I should learn it. So, I exaggerated my practice. It was easy to tell, but it was not easy to do, like if you were taking tennis lessons and you were told to do it this way or that way, you would think it was easy until you tried to do it. It turns out it’s not that easy after all. So, that was how we learned a piece. During the first lesson, the teacher would give all the corrections. When you met again for the second lesson for the same piece, you should have done it right already.

RS: Sascha Gorodnitzki. She eventually became my teacher up to 1979.

RS: I finished my master’s degree in one year. I made sure to work fast.

DT: Let’s talk about favorites. What are your passions outside of piano?

RS: Well it’s not really a passion, it’s more of a hobby. I like to eat, and I like travelling. I like Filipino food, Spanish, Italian. I like lengua.

DT: What is your favorite concert piece of all time?

RS: I have several. Rachmaninoff No.3. Prokofieff Concerto (no. 2 in G minor). These are concertos I’ve played before that are either difficult or that have really fascinated me because of the technical challenge. Not necessarily favorites but pieces that had a strong impact on myself. LIke Rachmaninoff No. 2. Then, the Busoni Concerto, which is 178 pages, or 1 hour and 15 minutes long. It’s the longest piece I ever played. To my knowledge ako pa lang siguro nakatugtog dito nun. (I am the only one who ever played it.)

DT: Who are your favorite classical artists?

RS: Vladimir Horowitz, Arturo Benedetti Michaelangeli, and Krystian Zimerman.

RS: I’m not a moviegoer. But when I was still in New York, I went more for the non- mainstream movies, the independent films. In Broadway, I prefer older Broadway, like King and I and South Pacific.

DT: So, which Broadway music do you like?

RS: I play Fair Lady, Phantom of the Opera medley and Sound of Music.

RS: I’m not a book reader myself. My bedroom story is Sudoku, to lull me to sleep.

Tickets to the concert are available at the CCP Box Office (832-3704) and TicketWorld (891-9999) outlets.