Festival in honor of the violinist “Alfredo De Saint Malo”
Music, Education, Panama
Exceptional virtuoso and Panamanian violin teacher.
Alfredo de Saint Malo was born in the city of Panama on December 13, 1898. His parents were Don Rodolfo Bierman of Saint Malo, born in Curaçao, who arrived in Panama at the age of twenty to devote himself to business, and Mrs. Clementina Orillac, distinguished lady of Panamanian society. Alfredo de Saint Malo began his musical studies with his father, who was a violinist, violist and, in addition, Consul of the Kingdom of Sweden in Panama. In a family atmosphere that paid tribute to the taste for music, particularly the violin, with his sister Helena and his brothers Augusto, Alberto, Guillermo and Rodolfo, his magnificent talent began to flourish. In 1907 he entered the School of Music that the government of Panama had established at the dawn of the Republic, whose director was Don Narciso Garay, famous violinist, composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, essayist and diplomat. This school was elevated to the category of National Conservatory of Music and Declamation, the first of the republican era, in 1911, taking as models the conservatories of the old continent, and in particular the Paris Conservatory.
In 1915 Saint Malo received his Violin Diploma with the First Position of Honor at the Panamanian Conservatory, whereupon the following year, the government of the Republic of Panama, presided by Dr. Belisario Porras, awarded him a scholarship to continue his studies at the Conservatory of Music in Paris, where he was admitted to the class of Dr. Edouard Nadaud. He also studied with Lucien Capet and Georges Enesco, and later with Oscar Morini in Vienna. In 1919, Alfredo de Saint Malo won the First Prize of Violin and Gold Medal at the Conservatory of Music in Paris, a fact that immediately launched him as virtuoso at the main concert halls in Europe and America.
He began his career with a concert with the Orchestra of the Conservatory of Paris, directed by Diran Alexanian, and a recital, accompanied on the piano by the great French composer Gabriel Fauré, then director of the conservatory. From then on he appeared in the most famous halls of Europe, with great success of public and press: Sala Gaveau, of Paris; Wigmore Hall, London; Musikvereinsaal, from Vienna; Bechteinsaal, from Berlin; Room of the Conservatory of Zurich, Switzerland, and many more. A critic of the newspaper Le Figaro in Paris wrote that in Saint Malo he found the great violin school of the highest masters, and that his personality, in which temperament and virtuosity were united, added his technique. The famous Parisian critic Vuillermoz, on the other hand, wrote about the presentation of Saint Malo in Paris, which had given Parisians the opportunity to appreciate outstanding qualities, purity of style and intelligent and distinguished interpretation. This critic also pointed to his mastery of a pure and precise technique, adding that his phrasing always maintained the balance. The critic of Berlin admired his interpretation of the famous “Sonata del Diablo” by Tartini, whose cadenza allowed him to demonstrate his skill and his polyphonic ability. In Vienna, the newspaper Weltblatt referred to his “unusual maturity” and his passionate temperament, full of emotion. And so the praises were repeated in London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Rome, Bologna; in short, throughout Europe.
In 1926 he arrived for the first time in the United States. He presented five concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York, at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, and in Boston, Philadelphia, Lexington, Oklahoma and many other American cities. In Symphony Hall, in Boston, he presented a recital with Maurice Ravel on the piano, in which he premiered the “Sonata en Sol for violin and piano” by the composer. From there he continued his career through the Caribbean to Puerto Rico; throughout Central America and South America to Buenos Aires. In 1929 he made a concert tour of Italy, where he performed in the Sala Sgambati, in many others and in the Vatican, before Pope Pius XI, and then before his successor, Pope Pius XII. He was then invited to appear at Villa Torlonia before Benito Mussolini, nicknamed, Il Duce. In that same year he was evaluated by the American magazine Times as one of the ten greatest violinists in the world. In 1939, he was invited to present a concert at the White House in Washington D.C. for the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. More than twenty years of triumphs in the old and the new continent, sometimes only with his companion, and others as soloist of great orchestras, define the imprint of the great violinist who was Alfredo de Saint Malo.
Alfredo de Saint Malo was born in Panama City in 1898. As a child, his parents enrolled him in a little school directed by Narciso Garay Díaz to take violin lessons. Thanks to his exceptional talent, in 1915 the government of Panama granted Saint Malo a scholarship to study violin at the Paris Conservatory. He enrolled as a full time student in 1916.
Upon graduation in 1919, he received the coveted Premier Prix de Violin and the same year he played as soloist at the age of 21.
In 1925, after an invitation from an artistic association in New York, Saint Malo performed various concerts there, and immediately after, in other U. S. cities. Reviewers and listeners agreed that he had incomparable talent. He spent a long concert season in California after signing a contract with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
In 1929 Saint Malo made a successful tour of Italy. In Rome he was welcomed by Pope Pío XII, and according to the October 27, 1929 of Panama’s newspaper La Estrella de Panamá, he played for Mussolini. Mussolini stated he had never heard before a violinist of such excellent quality. The newspaper also stated: “Alfredo de Saint Malo was also welcomed by Pope Pío XI in a private hearing. After listening to Saint Malo, the Pope blessed Saint Malo’s Stradivarius violin.”
In 1930, Saint Malo returned to Panama and was greeted with countless accolades. Upon his arrival he performed various recitals at the National Theatre of Panama and at the recital hall of the Instituto Nacional de Panamá.
In 1934 he was invited to the White House to perform privately for president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his wife Eleanor, and various other relatives. Saint Malo also performed many times with The National Symphony of Panama, which was founded in 1941.
Eduardo Charpentier Herrera notes, in a short biography of Saint Malo: “In the year 1941 [Alfredo de Saint Malo] was recruited by Dr. Arnulfo Arias, Panama’s president at the time, to become director of the newly founded National Conservatory of Music.
As a soloist, Saint Malo performed with the Orchestra of the Paris Conservatoire, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra (1929), the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra (1930), the Paris Poulet Symphony Orchestra (1931), the Boston Pops Orchestra, Arthur Fiedler (1939), the Symphony Orchestra of Colombia (1938 and 1947), the Symphony Orchestra of the University of Mexico (1947), the Symphony Orchestra of El Salvador (1947), the Costa Rican Symphony Orchestra (1947), and the Orchestra Symphony of Panama in innumerable occasions.
Saint Malo made several recordings, among which stands out an album with music by Rimski Korsakov and Wieniawski for the signature RCA Víctor (red stamp No. 4163), with André Kostelanetz on the piano, who afterwards was very successful in his performances as concertist and on the radio, and who got married to the famous soprano Lily Pons. The recording belongs to the collection titled Historia Aumentada del Violin en Grabaciones, of which 250 copies were reproduced (1974-1976); also included in an album of History of the Violin in Recordings of the Columbia label and in an album of Latin American composers (Heitor Villa Lobos, Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez, Domingo Santa Cruz, Andrés Sas and Guillermo Uribe Holguín) with Nicolás Slonimsky, Fritz Magg and Olga Averino at the piano, also from Columbia (M 437), all in 78 revolutions format.
In 1941, the government of Panama, presided by Dr. Arnulfo Arias, established a Conservatory of Music and Declamation, the second in the Republican era, of which Alfredo de Saint Malo was appointed director. After more than a decade of decline in matters of art -the final closure of the first conservatory in 1927-, the opening of the new institution marked the beginning of an extraordinary renaissance, which once again had as models the great conservatories of Europe . Saint Malo convened high-quality foreign and national teachers and directed the conservatory towards an educational philosophy that aspired to raise the artistic levels of the entire Panamanian society. The professors, and then the students, presented themselves constantly at evenings, recitals and concerts, not only in the city of Panama, but also in Colón and in the interior of the republic. The theater was greatly promoted, along with the musical presentations. From 1943 the magazine Harmony was published, like organ of the Conservatory of Music and Declamation, directed initially by the Nicaraguan teacher and composer Luis A. Delgadillo, and later by the university professor of Literature Enrique Ruiz Vernacci. The Harmony magazine not only reflected the musical environment of Panama, but also published articles by international personalities such as the art critic Nicolás Slonimsky and the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. The conservatory created its own orchestra of students and teachers, led by violinist Alexander Feinland and his wife, cellist Elizabeth Feinland. The Orchestra of the Conservatory reached high levels of perfection and had soloists of the likes of Eduardo Charpentier Herrera, Panamanian flute player, and Nélida Odnoposoff, great Argentine pianist. The members of the orchestra fed new elements to the new Symphony Orchestra of Panama, which then led the teachers Herbert de Castro and then Walter Myers. In the middle of the century the Conservatory of Music and Declamation of Panama reached to have forty professors in the diverse disciplines, and more than a thousand of students. Such were the multiple contributions that Alfredo de Saint Malo offered to his country. However, in August 1953, the Conservatory was closed by a government with no vision for the future, as a result of which Saint Malo was left out, who resigned his position as director.
In 1955 he was appointed professor of violin in the Music Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Texas at Austin. The artist remained in Austin for many years, dedicated to the teaching of his instrument and the training of countless violinists in the United States. He returned to Panama frequently to give concerts, until his retirement.
Alfredo de Saint Malo died in Austin, Texas, in 1984.
More than half a century since the Conservatory of Music and Declamation flourished – from 1941 to 1953 – the seeds that the great violinist from Panama, Alfredo de Saint Malo, sowed in that society still bear fruit. For example, the Sinfonía Concertante Foundation of Panama, founded in 2008 by Professors Issac Miguel Casals and Luis Casals, created the Saint Malo Festival.
During his life, Alfredo de Saint Malo received honors, medals and distinctions throughout the world. Among them, the First Prize and Gold Medal of the Paris Conservatory (1919); the Crown of Golden Laurels, by public subscription, with the inscription “Homage of the Panamanian People” (1929); L’Ordre National de Haití (1934); the Croix du Sud of Brazil (1949); Cruz and Eloy Alfaro Medal of Ecuador (1952 and 1956); Les Palmes Academiques de France (1953). In 1956 he became a permanent member of the International Institute of American Ideals; in 1961, member Pi Kappa Lambda of the University of Texas, and in 1963, he was awarded the Order of Vasco Núñez de Balboa as a Grand Official of Panama.
Bibliography
Courtesy of the website: Alfredo de Saint Malo Shore EnCaribe Encyclopedy of History and Culture of the Caribbean
Charpentier Herrera, Eduardo: Symphonic Orchestra of Panama, Editora de la Nación, Panama, 1972.
Clear, Thomas L .: Augmented History of the Violin on Records. (1920-1950), New York, 1974-1976.
Íngram, Jaime: “Notes for a History of Music in Panama”. (1903-2003); in Istmo, a virtual magazine of literary and cultural Central American studies, No. 7, November, December 2003.
Mayer-Serra, Otto: Music and Musicians of Latin America, Atlante, Mexico D.F., 1947.
Slonimsky, Nicolas: Music of Latin America, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1945.
World Biography, s.e. New York, 1943, 1946, 1948.
Wolfschonn, Erik: Artistic manifestations in Panama: introductory study and anthology, Library of the Panamanian Culture. University of Panama, Panama, 1983.