November 2007 / Texas Monthly
The Road Less Traveled
Fort Worth When is a symphonic concert more than just a musical performance? When it
transports you to another world. The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of
Caminos del Inka this month aims to do just that by exposing audiences to the sounds,
yes, but also the sights of Peru’s historic Inca Trail, an extensive network of paths that
once covered some 14,000 miles (today, hiking through the Andes Mountains to see
Machu Picchu is on any serious traveler’s to-do list). For the past fifteen years, music
director Miguel Harth-Bedoya, who joined the FWSO in 2000, has been collecting
compositions from his native Peru in an effort to preserve his homeland’s musical
heritage. Now works that might have been forgotten or left to collect dust in South
American homes and museums are being published and revived as new arrangements
here. The FWSO will open the evening with “El cóndor pasa,” a traditional Peruvian
song that will sound familiar to Simon and Garfunkel fans (the duo covered it in 1970),
and follow it with Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, a six-part string quartet written by
composer-in-residence Gabriela Frank (herself of Peruvian ancestry). Complementing the
melodies will be a slide show of stunning images of the people and landscapes of Peru,
many of which were snapped by photographer Fabiana van Lente, who was born in Lima
and is now based in Fort Worth. (The program closes with a non-Peruvian Brahms piano
concerto performed by Roberto Plano, a Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
finalist.) Of course, no culture—especially one as significant as the Incas’—can be fully
captured in only a few hours’ time, but this concert should go a long way in piquing your
interest in this far-flung region. And wait, there’s more: Harth-Bedoya has unearthed so
many gems that a second Caminos del Inka installment is slated for February. Nov 16—