For the first time in two years, Instituto Cervantes, the cultural arm of the Embassy of Spain, hosted a special concert last Tuesday, May 3 at the National Museum of Fine Arts (3rd Floor, old Senate Hall). This was the first concert of the Instituto in this period of the “new normal” and headlining it is music professor Pedro Bonet.
Bonet is the first Spanish performer to perform in the Philippines after the pandemic started.
Titled “From the first circumnavigation to the Manila Galleon: Music on the Iberian circumnavigation routes”, this concert is organized in the framework of the Quincentennial celebration of the first circumnavigation, one of the greatest achievements of humanity. The musical pieces, which will be played on fourteen different flutes, are carefully selected to represent a site in the journey or historical figure relevant to this expedition.
A music professor specializing in the recorder flute, Bonet is a founding member and director of the baroque music ensemble “La Folía”, one of the veteran groups internationally recognized in the field of historical performance. He has held concerts in more than forty countries on five continents, and recorded CDs such as Baroque Madrid, Instrumental Music in the Age of Velázquez, and La Nao de China (Music from the Spanish trade route to the Far East), among others. Audiences at his Manila concert were captivated by Bonet’s performance.
Prior to the concert, a guided tour to the exhibit “The Longest Journey: The First Journey Around the World” also took place. Also organized in the framework of the First Circumnavigation by the Embassy of Spain and the National Museum, the exhibit highlights the entire route of the voyage, through a display of objects and artifacts, along with priceless documents preserved at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain, and other important archives, libraries and museums.
The concert is organized by Instituto Cervantes de Manila with the collaboration of the Embassy of Spain in the Philippines and the National Museum of the Philippines.