Playing the piano with one hand, maestro Joaquín Achúcarro closed the concert at the Guggenheim in New York on Tuesday night for his 90th birthday, in an exercise in virtuosity within the reach of very few. That was his encore, quite a boast.
“It’s Scriabin’s ‘Nocturne for the Left Hand’, a complex composition,” says Emma Jiménez, the wife of one of the greatest pianists in Spanish music. “It is a piece that they always ask for and it is famous that no one interprets it like him, that is what they say”, adds this woman who, in addition to being the artist’s partner for 62 years and being a magnificent cook (according to him ), is also a renowned pianist.
Dressed in all black, he receives a bouquet of flowers, shouts of bravo, with the entire room on their feet and he returns the affection towards the spectators. Ninety years old and so fresh. His hands maintain their vigor and a vertiginous movement.
“It’s an age where you find out that stairs can be life threatening. I give her a saying, when you go up or down the stairs is when you really find out your age, ”she recites smiling in a conversation a while before the concert. He does not turn 90 until November 1, so in Bilbao he will have another celebration two days after that date, at the Guggenheim headquarters in his hometown, where he will celebrate his birthday and the 25th anniversary of the institution. Achúcarro also did an inaugural concert then.
Such a long journey for volumes of memoirs. “I remember my debut in Barcelona, ??cinco días antes de casarme. It was with Eduardo Toldrà, playing Paganini’s rhapsody at the Palau de la Música,” he explains. Remember other friends, Xaiver Montsalvatge, Frederic Montpou, Alicia Larrocha.
He says that, on one occasion, Montpou invited Alicia, him and someone else to listen to the prelude he had composed, he wanted to know how it sounded to them. He “sat at the piano and his hands were shaking. He would be nervous to know what we said or if he was going to turn out well, ”he confesses.
Do your hands shake? “Not the hands, but inside, come on. It is inevitable to be nervous and afraid before going on stage, now too, yes, of course, it doesn’t go away with age. The other way around, it’s worse. You never know what you’re going to do, let’s see what comes out tonight, ”she says.
In the talk he avoids making American-style distinctions of who is the best of songwriters. “Let’s not talk about number one,” she stresses. “My personal satisfaction is with what I am going to do in this concert, which are works that I have worked a lot on and I really like and I hope that those who come will like it,” she added.
In view of the surrender of the public, the night lights up with the sound of his piano, in which Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin take shape thanks to his hands. Claude Debussy, Manuel de Falla, Enrique Granados and Isaac Albéniz.
In the stalls there are a few of his students from the United States, where he has taught his art. For 33 years she has taught at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. But not for this he has stopped traveling incessantly. “Five million miles to go and back,” she jokes.
“What happens is that now with planes that fly at 800 or 900 kilometers per hour, things that seemed unlikely can be done,” he says. This is another world. “The first time I played in Oviedo, I left Bilbao at 7:30 in the morning and arrived at half past ten at night. This was quite a few years ago, right? ”, She evokes.
At the age of thirteen he played at the Bilbao Philharmonic’s fiftieth anniversary celebration, in which he performed Mozart’s concerto in D minor, which his great-uncle, Javier Arisqueta, had played on the opening day half a century earlier.
So the piano thing runs in the family. He assures that his father played it very well, “as a child I fell asleep listening to mazurkas by Chopin, rhapsodies by Brahms and who knows how many other things”.
Despite this early performance, he then had to convince the family, since they preferred an industrial engineer, a doctor, a lawyer or an economist. “I made a kind of bet with my father,” she remarks. A year of trial, hardening in his music studies. He finished his piano career, won prizes in Spain and abroad. He lived in Paris, in Italy, in Vienna and won the Liverpool contest, “studying 48 weeks”, debuted in London and “that’s where it all started” It’s clear: “I won the bet”.
Taking stock, he maintains that everything is based on “working day by day, and no matter what happens, with storms, with sun, with rain, with wind, but there is a keyboard and behind that keyboard Mozart is looking at you, for example, or Chopin is looking at you, or Brahms, or Bethoven”. And as hard as it is, “it would be too bad a dream” to imagine a world without pianos.
“Personally, the best thing that has happened to me is easy, I have been married to Emma Jiménez for 62 years,” he stresses. “In music there have been moments. Yehudi Menuhin coming down from the podium with the Berlin Philharmonic to tell me what a beautiful cadenza he had composed for the Mozart concerto we were playing,” he relates.
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“As long as I can continue and they call me, I’ll go play, the best I can,” he insists. “Nostalgia for the past time? And what is the use? No, it’s not nostalgia, it’s seeing what has been happening and today, tonight, is the result of everything that has happened before, ”she reaffirms. No retiring: “This is not a farewell, it will come, this is only for 90 years.”
