20 short tone poems (and one episode) for piano two hands, Op. 34 (1932)
Richard H. Stein · A Suite of Canarian Culture
The celebrations for the anniversary of the founding of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria provided the opportunity to rediscover a personality who came to Gran Canaria in the 1930s and who played a significant role in the debate that was taking place at the time about the nature and perspective of Canarian culture, and the search for a cultural identity: Richard H. Stein. He did so with an interesting musical work that he composed on the island, the Suite »Canarias« [Canarian Suite] op. 34. In this work, the artist and intellectual from Central Europe presents his understanding of this island, and he finds new sounds for it, for which he has to leave everything familiar to him in Germany behind and set out on completely new paths in order to get involved in the world of the island, however unsuitable it may be for creative work and intellectual work. In his work, he makes the great potential of this island fertile, so to speak, and he shows a way in which its culture could, by returning to itself, pave a path that is as down-to-earth as it is future-oriented, namely in the union of regional uniqueness and modernity.
Richard Heinrich Stein was born on February 28, 1882 in Halle (Saale). After travelling to the Canary Islands for the first time in 1914 as a result of the events of the First World War, he decided to move permanently to Gran Canaria in 1932 under the impression of the growing National Socialism in his country. In Monte Coello, on the Camino de la Angostura, he built a spacious house that he called "Casa del Sol" and in which he housed his extensive library and his excellent record collection.
Although he led an active life on the island for ten years, travelling all over the archipelago, taking part in conferences and discussions, writing polemical articles on island tourism, composing pieces, organising musical evenings at the Pérez Galdós Theatre and at his house, and also receiving recognition from the local press (as can be seen in the detailed report by the poet and chronicler Luis Doreste Silva in the newspaper Today shows), his trace is lost, and after his unexpected and mysterious death on August 11, 1942 in his house, he is forgotten. Only decades later, the musicologist Lothar Siemens Hernández and his colleagues Isidoro Santana Gil and Sergio Alonso unearth Richard H. Stein's work and begin to research his life and work, including the Canary Suite, which can be considered his most important composition created on the island, and which they made known with the support of the renowned entrepreneur Sergio Alonso Reyes.
Finally, the pianist and professor Sergio Alonso brings the Canary Suite for the first time in its complete form. Until then, only individual pieces had been heard, for example in the concert of the Canarian pianist Fermina Caballero Massieu on March 5, 1936 in the Teatro Cuyás. While the first piece of the suite, Moonlit night in the Orotava Valley, stands out for its masterly compositional quality, one can note the last piece, Tejeda, to which the composer adds a poetic footnote in the score, for its deep and lyrical structure.
With his concert in the »Auditorio Alfredo Kraus«, Sergio Alonso has rediscovered the work of the important musician and intellectual Richard Heinrich Stein, whose legacy aroused much resonance at the founding anniversary of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The world premiere of the Canary Suite, in which the composer makes the sea and the landscapes of the island tangible in the language of music, and the village Tejeda, from which the poet Domingo Doreste Fray Lesco (a contemporary of Stein) thought he could overlook a »miniature continent« on the island of Gran Canaria.
Traditions and customs are mentioned here: songs with stomping dance, Canarian serenade or Small reed flute players from the island of La Palma, but also musical impressions that are analogous to the journalistic and literary album pages of the 1910s to 1930s by Eduardo Benítez Inglott, Carlos Navarro Ruis, Francisco González Días or Alonso Quesada. Furthermore, Stein sets the atmosphere of the autochthonous to music, for example in pieces such as Moonlit night in the Orotava Valley or An oasis with children playing and Rural Folk Festival as in Episode: Homeland songs on board a German ship. It is the same search for a new and unique form of expression for the »original« that can also be found in the visual arts among the graduates of the »Escuela de Artes Luján Pérez« in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, or among the important painter Néstor Martín Fernández de la Torre, who was active at about the same time as Canary Suite creates a work that not only reflects the Canarian soul, but also the desire to consolidate and convey one's own identity. And then there are the atmospheric portraits of island life, in pieces like Games of the orphan girls in an old courtyard, Old songs and dances, A noble marriage or Dusk in the Cathedral of Las Palmas.
To explore the personality and work of the composer of the Canary Suite To better understand Stein's position, we must also recall the three lectures he gave in the courtyard of the Instituto de Las Palmas (where the university's rectorate is today), which, with their wide-ranging and vociferous polemics, attracted not a few critics but also many supporters. His numerous articles in the local press are also worth mentioning, in which he took a firm stance on the future of the tourism industry - a subject that was considered vital for Gran Canaria at the time and was much debated, and which Néstor Martín Fernández de la Torre and Fray Lesco also addressed, while at the same time the "Centro de Iniciativas y Turismo" was founded to promote tourism. Stein's statement was reacted to by the most important companies on the island at the time and a lively debate ensued. Finally, we must not forget the concert mentioned above in March 1936 at the Teatro Circo Cuyás, in which the pianist Fermina Caballero Massieu from Gran Canaria played some pieces by the Canary Suite The demanding Stein did not hesitate to compare her with the great Venezuelan artist Teresa Carreño, assuring her: "... she is in no way inferior to the best young pianists...".
Sergio Alonso's artistic qualities are well known, but it is important to highlight his humanistic education, his intellectual level and his profound knowledge of culture and society, as all of this makes him the ideal person to study and disseminate the work of the great musician and intellectual Richard Heinrich Stein - he truly appreciates his legacy.
May the work of Richard Heinrich Stein, who is buried in his adopted home of Santa Brígida on Gran Canaria, shine forever in the sky of Canarian culture.
Juan José Laforet (Official Chronicler of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria)
The German composer Richard Heinrich Stein, born on February 28, 1882 in Halle (Saale), initially studied law at the University of Berlin and music under Engelbert Humperdinck at the Royal Academy of Arts; in 1911 he received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Erlangen. Although he was a remarkable essayist, his musical calling ultimately determined his life, both in his lectures on music and as a composer. To escape the horrors of the First World War, he lived in Spain for the first time between 1 and 1914, where he moved in the intellectual circles of Madrid and Barcelona. After his return to Germany, he ran his own music school and worked as music director at the Urania Theater in 1919 and at the Berlin Radio in 1923. After that he worked as a music teacher for piano and composition. After the Nazis came to power in 1924, he emigrated to the Canary Islands in Spain and settled in Monte Coello, in the municipality of Santa Brígida (Gran Canaria), where he died under mysterious circumstances on August 1933, 11.
Richard H. Stein composed 100 piano pieces and 50 songs. He experimented with quarter-tone music and constructed a piano and a clarinet for it; in 1909 he published a brochure on the subject. His Opus 26, Two Concert Pieces for Cello and Piano, is considered the first printed quarter-tone composition.
Serge Alonso, born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, graduated from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria with the distinction of "Honourable Mention" and subsequently with a doctorate "Cum Laude". From 2009 to 2015 he was director of the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Canarias and from 2009 to 2015 a member of the Consejo Superior de Enseñanzas Artísticas del Ministry of Education and Science. From January 1994 to June 2017 he was also solo pianist of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, where he played under the direction of Mstislav Rostropovich, Rafael Frübeck de Burgos, Antoni Ros Marbá, Günther Herbig, Pedro Halffter, Fabio Biondi, Bernhard Klee, Adrian Leaper and Semion Bichkov, among others. As a soloist and as a member of chamber music ensembles, Alonso has had a wide-ranging musical career, both in his home country and on international stages and tours (including in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, China, Japan, Morocco and Mexico). His commitment to jazz is also noteworthy, to which he dedicates an important part of his repertoire. Sergio Alonso performs with Natalia Falcón as a duo for two pianos and piano four hands.