By Teo Guerrero

Three years after she passed away in June 2021, pianist Nena de Rosario-Villanueva will be given a special birthday tribute on Sept. 22, at 2 p.m. at the Manila Pianos and at 5:30 p.m. at the Klavierhaus in New York.
      
Called “Nena: Remembering Nena del Rosario-Villanueva, the tribute” will be highlighted with a special lecture on her life and works by Dr. Alegria Ferrer.

For the Manila Pianos tribute, the featured artists are pianists Danica Mae Antazo and Pauline Aguila, with a special number from Elnora Halili.

The New York artists paying tribute to Villanueva on the same date are pianist Jovianney Emmanuel Cruz, soprano Margarita Gianelli, and pianist Rene Dalandan.

Dr. Ferrer’s lecture will most likely touch on her early musical journey, starting in Iloilo City, which saw her amazing transformation as the country’s first piano prodigy rising to prominence after the Second World War.

She hid with her family in nearby Iloilo mountains during the Second World War, but it seemed she couldn’t part with the piano in between war and peace.

A story was told that, during the war years, her mother, Gertrudis Hautea del Rosario (a student of MSO founder Alexander Lippay and a graduate of the UP Conservatory of Music), had asked for 20 sturdy men to carry the family upright piano to their hiding place, crossing rice fields and going up and down verdant hills.

An intense love affair with the piano while her country was at war made her an easy choice to play during the first Independence Day celebration in 1946. It also resulted in her orchestral debut with the Manila Symphony Orchestra under Herbert Zipper and with the Quezon City Philharmonic under Maestro Ramon Tapales.

It wasn’t long before she became the first Filipina soloist of the famous Seiji Ozawa on his first visit in the country with the NHK Symphony.

When she first met Dr. Zipper, the young Nena could already perform the fiendishly challenging Chopin Etudes and two concertos without score.

Before she left the country for further studies abroad, she studied under Victorina Lobregat and James Milne Charnley.

After a farewell concert at the UST Gymnasium, del Rosario headed for the US, where she was accepted at the famous Curtis Institute of Music at age 11 under the tutelage of the eminent Russian pedagogue Isabelle Vengerova, she attended masterclasses with no less than the legendary Vladimir Horowitz and Abrams Chasin.

The first highlight of her Curtis years was winning a piano competition sponsored by the New York Times. That was her Carnegie Hall debut at age 12!

At age 15, she became finalist in the season’s “Musical Talent in Our Schools” series and returned to Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra under Igor Buketoff.

The competition was sponsored by The New York Times and Station WQXR.

With the onset of the radio in the early ’50s, Del Rosario became the first Filipino pianist to be introduced to mainstream audiences throughout the US. She appeared on CBS Radio no less than seven times starting with her first appearance at age 12.

The program Gateways to Music was broadcast nationwide followed by appearances on Voice of America and The Green Room Series with the CBS Symphony.

When del Rosario returned to the Philippines in the mid-’50s after she acquired an Artist’s Diploma at Curtis, she was the celebrity pianist of the hour.

During her time, the FEU Auditorium was the cultural center. Her last concerts in Manila in the first decade of the new millennium were at the Francisco Santiago Hall and many times at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

“Nena del Rosario-Villanueva was a gentle and sweet lady. It was an honor to have worked with her and Maestro Oscar Yatco,” recalled Angel Nacino of the Manila Chamber Orchestra (MCO) Foundation, which had a concert series at the Francisco Santiago Hall. “She is a legend! She was one of those I worked with who could play from memory in her senior years. She was one of those who I worked with who could perform in a sparkly low-back gown, too! And with that back, I could see clearly from backstage how her muscles worked together and connected with those powerful hands and fast fingers. She requested me to bring her nine-foot-long piano to our Santiago Hall. How could I say no? Nine men had to carry the piano because our lifter could accommodate only a seven-foot piano.”

When del Rosario passed away in 2021, her brother Mariano del Rosario III could only remember her thus: “She was relentless in the desire and design to further her piano skill sets and went to Paris to continue her studies. A simple yet poignant experience I recall is when she was rehearsing in one of the concert halls, and a custodian checking the building heard her play. He was so taken by her exquisite practice and was so moved by the music during her practice that he gave her access to the hall at any time. He was so impressed. Losing Nena means I’ve lost a friend, a love of my life from childhood. I have lost a sister who would do anything for me or a friend, a kind person who cares for everyone even before caring for herself. A sister proud of her children and their accomplishments, a mother and a grandmother who cared and loved with all her heart.”
For inquiries on the Sept. 22 tribute at the Manila Pianos, call 0917-800-9357.