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First Take
Our students' debut in the recording studio
Recording an album for the first time is, along with stage experience, one of the great transformative moments for any professional musician. On this page, we present our students’ final projects: a series of pieces they have worked on in the School’s classrooms that meet, for the first time, the rigor and demands of a professional studio.
Our students have stepped away from their usual stages to face the microphones, learning to capture the essence of their music in a recording edited to the highest quality. What you are about to hear is not just the conclusion of an academic stage, but their first introduction to the world as professional artists.
The Americas have as many musical traditions as landscapes. In this playlist, our students chart their own itinerary: from the “Alfredo Kraus” Voice Chair Fundación Ramón Areces, mezzo-soprano Paola Leguizamón transports us to Colombia with the sensitivity of Evocación, by Jaime León
Finally, the piano of Daumants Liepins invites us to discover Barber’s Excursions, a work that demands the perfect balance between structure and expression that we seek to instill in every note
Anything goes when it comes to singing without words. Violinist Jacobo Christensen opens with Jacob Gade’s Tango Jalousie, a work written in 1925 for silent film that never stopped telling stories without words. Double bassist Nuno Coroado turns his instrument into a baritone voice for Schubert’s Gute Nacht and Brahms’s Von ewiger Liebe.
Violinist Anna Siegreich performs Paul Ben-Haim’s Three Songs Without Words, pieces written expressly so that the violin can speak with the diction of song. Violist Ana María Alonso performs Anima ad Anima, a work composed for this occasion by Andrea Benedetto, in which she plays and sings simultaneously with her mouth closed, blending both voices into one.
Violinist Sara Valencia brings to life Ana Vázquez’s Poemas sobre Lorca, in which each letter of the alphabet is assigned a note: Lorca’s poetry transformed into its own sound system. Cellist Eva Arderíus puts her instrument at the service of Spanish folk music—the Jota by Falla and Lorca’s poems set to music, Anda, jaleo and La tarara.
Flautist Margherita Brodski closes with Bartók’s Suite Paysanne Hongroise, a tribute to the Hungarian peasant melodies that the composer collected in the field.
Music composed by women from yesterday and today, from here and there…
Violinist Patricia Cordero opens the playlist with the Rondeau op. 97 by Cécile Chaminade, a Parisian composer who filled concert halls during her lifetime yet was systematically ignored by the academy of her time. Cellist Ülker Tümer performs Aşk Havası (“The Air of Love”) by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, an Azerbaijani composer whose music builds bridges between the mugham tradition and contemporary language.
Pianist Kirill Zheleznov immerses us in Russian Dead-End Alleys by Nastasya Khrushcheva, a 2018 work composed of 34 fragments with no fixed order—here in the sequence chosen by Kirill himself—that transforms each performance into a different map of the same city. Violinist Sara Valencia performs De un lejano amor by Laura Vega Santana, a Canarian composer who writes from contained emotion.
Patricia Cordero closes with the Three Romances op. 22 by Clara Schumann, a masterpiece from a catalogue that the 19th century did not know how—or did not wish—to hear with the attention it deserves.
Composing music for a soloist may seem simpler than for an orchestra, but it requires a very deep understanding of the instrument’s timbral, technical and expressive qualities.
Violist Cristina Cordero opens with Suite No. 2 for Solo Cello BWV 1008 by Bach, in a transcription for viola. Clarinetist Diego Micó performs Monodia for Clarinet, a work composed for this occasion by Sevan Gharibian, in which a single melodic line sustains the entire musical discourse.
Violinist Anna Siegreich returns to the playlist with Sonata in G for violin solo Op. 44 by Paul Ben-Haim, one of the great unaccompanied violin sonatas of the 20th century, demanding in both technique and concentration. Clarinetist Natacha Correa performs Shrinking Cages by Andrea Benedetto, a four-movement work that explores the physical and expressive limits of the instrument.
Cellist Ülker Tümer performs Meditations 1 and 2 by Selman Ada, a Turkish composer whose music engages in a dialogue between silence and memory. Violinist Sara Valencia plays Forte by David del Puerto, a 2018 work that, despite its title, finds its greatest intensity in moments of greatest restraint.
Double bassist Alessandro Spada closes with Valentine by Jacob Druckman.
Nature has always been a source of inspiration in artistic creation. This playlist brings together four works born from the landscape—Japanese, Georgian, Colombian, French—as the protagonist of the music.
Violist Hiroki Kasai opens with A String Around Autumn by Toru Takemitsu, a 1989 work in which autumn is not described but breathed: sixteen minutes of sound suspended in cold air. Pianist Mariam Chitanava performs Q’ursha by Sandro Tsikoridze, a Georgian poetic cycle divided into seasons where nature and soul merge—spring is reborn with sweetness, summer burns in fullness, autumn falls with melancholy, and winter dissolves into a whisper. Mezzo-soprano Paola Leguizamón sings Gotas de ajenjo by Jaime León, a song that carries the serene bitterness of things remembered from afar. Double bassist Nuno Coroado closes with En sourdine by Debussy, a poem by Verlaine transformed into music that always seems to arrive from the other side of something.