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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Friday, August 08, 2025

entry arrow9:52 PM | The Pianist as Pinoy

There is a word in music that feels like an apt description for the way pianist Horacio Nuguid plays: “cantabile”—which means the smooth quality of making the instrument sing. This was the thought that stayed with me through Sound Scapes, his piano recital of rare and resplendent works from the Filipino classical repertoire, which unfolded simply and beautifully on the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium stage last 6 August 2025—a respite we didn’t think we needed in the middle of the week. In an age where music-making often feels like a gladiatorial sport—faster, louder, more technically dazzling—Nuguid sat before the instrument with the calm assurance of someone who had nothing to prove. And in that unhurried humility, there was magic.

Nuguid is no stranger to the world’s stages. Trained at the University of Santo Tomas, he would later take his craft to the University of Northern Iowa and to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His career has taken him from solo recitals to orchestral collaborations in the Philippines, Mexico, and the United States, and into close musical partnerships with distinguished singers and instrumentalists.

As artistic director of the Rochester Chamber Music Society, he has carved out a space for music-making that is both intimate and expansive. Honors have followed—among them the Ardee Award for outstanding artist in Rochester—and so has a commitment to teaching: master classes across continents, decades of shaping young pianists at the Young Artist World Piano Festival in Minnesota, and mentorship at the Philippine High School for the Arts. Recently, he has taken on the role of co-artistic director at the Bethel University Summer Piano Academy, continuing the work of nurturing the next generation, even as he brings the voices of our past composers back into the light.

It is with that pedigree that Nuguid makes his debut in Dumaguete, on the Luce stage. The program of Sound Scapes was itself an act of reclamation, designed that way by the pianist. According to him, in the Philippines, so much of our music’s history lies in dust and disappearance—scores lost to war, to neglect, to the indifference of cultural gatekeepers. Nuguid has made it his mission to retrieve these works from obscurity, curating and publishing an anthology—Philippine Piano Pieces (2023)—that has suddenly opened a long-closed window into our pianistic past. Sound Scapes at the Luce was the living and breathing embodiment of that project: nine pieces by nine Filipino composers, spanning decades, styles, and sensibilities, each given a voice on this night in Dumaguete. He proceeded through the program like a lecturer, introducing the importance of each piece at the podium, and then sitting down before the grand piano to demonstrate the wonderfully musicality he had just described.

From the very first notes of “Caricias (Danza)” by Juan de Saliagun Hernandez (1881–1945), who was known as a composer of dances, marches, and music for theatrical performances, it was clear that Nuguid was not merely reproducing what was on the score. His left hand, rich with warm bass resonance, grounded the dance’s rhythm; his right hand let the melody float in the air with limpid clarity. The contrast was a quiet marvel—you could almost “see” the separation of musical notes, and yet they conversed so naturally.

“Poeme” by Carmencita Arambulo (1938–2023) was another personal highlight for me. The 1957 piece is, like what it subtitle claims, “a song without words,” which Nuguid rendered with a tenderness that felt almost private, like overhearing someone’s cherished memory. He let the melody breathe, resisting the temptation to rush. At his age—seasoned, yes, with perhaps the occasional elasticity in tempo—there was no need for metronomic precision. Instead, there was the deeper rhythm of someone shaping a phrase to match the heartbeat of this beautiful song.

“Okaka (Theme and Variations)” by Rodolfo Cornejo (1909–1991) was the program’s playful centerpiece, an intricate work that tested the pianist’s dexterity and interpretive range. Nuguid navigated its shifting moods with ease, from the almost childlike charm of the theme to the more dramatic, harmonically adventurous variations. And then there was “Bontok Ili” by Rosendo Santos Jr. (1922–1994), a piece steeped in indigenous echoes, where Nuguid’s left-hand ostinatos—a continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm—pulsed like ritual drumbeats while the right hand spun modal melodies like threads of smoke.

One of the evening’s most quietly moving moments, at least for me, was “Meditacion (Nocturno)” by Filemon Sotto (1872–1966). Here, Nuguid leaned into the music’s meditative intent, letting each chord shimmer and fade, as if allowing the audience to listen not only to the sound but also to the silence that followed. In contrast, “Tarantelle No. 2” by Lucino Sacramento (1908–1984), which the composer wrote for a NAMCYA competition in 1978, burst forth with kinetic energy—and though Nuguid’s tempo was, by necessity, tempered, the rhythmic drive and the joy in the playing were intact.

When Nuguid arrived at “Kundiman” by Felipe Padilla de Leon (1912–1992), the recital shifted into something unmistakably Filipino. The bittersweet lyricism, the gentle swells of emotion… Nuguid played it as though telling a love story across generations. Nuguid’s rendition of “Malikmata” by Antonio Molina (1894–1980) shimmered with impressionistic colors, like a heavy dream one tries to recall in the morning light, unsettling but also bemusing. And finally, “Mayon (Fantasia de Concierto)” by Francisco Buencamino Sr. (1883–1952) closed the concert with a sense of Pinoy grandeur, its elevated folksiness made beautiful with Nuguid weaving together the virtuosity and lyricism that mark the best of our piano literature.

What struck me most, across all these works, was the utter lack of pretension in Nuguid’s playing. Nuguid did not play to impress. He played because this music deserved to be heard again. He played because these scores—many of them once teetering on the edge of oblivion—still had beauty to give. He played because, quite simply, he loved them. And we, listening, were made to love them too.

There were no flamboyant gestures, no exaggerated rubatos meant to elicit gasps. Even the occasional unevenness in tempo seemed part of the music’s lived-in honesty. In an era obsessed with perfection, this was a concert that embraced humanity—its frailty, yes, but also its capacity for grace.

By the final applause—and I was really surprised by the gusto of the audience after many years of watching piano recitals eliciting only tepid responses—I realized what Sound Scapes truly was: not just a recital, but an act of cultural memory. Nuguid had taken us on a journey through our own musical heritage, dusting off forgotten pages and giving them breath again. And as we filed out of the Luce, it felt less like leaving a performance and more like emerging from a long, nourishing conversation, one where every melody had been clear, every note had mattered, and the silences between them had spoken volumes.

Truth to tell, I was not really aware of Philippine piano music much until last Wednesday night. What the concert taught me is that it is a most curious and beautiful thing, a garden of melodies where Spanish-European grace, American verve, and the deep earthiness of our own indigenous rhythms mingle in unexpected bloom. (Forgive the flowery metaphor!) But apparently, like many gardens in our history, much of it has been left untended, its flowers hidden from view. The tragedy is partly logistical: pianists have simply not had access to the printed scores. The few that made it into print—often through the composer’s own efforts—have long since slipped out of circulation, their surviving copies asleep in library archives, or kept as delicate heirlooms, or ravaged by World War II, a fraught period when untold manuscripts and printed scores vanished in the fire and rubble.

But Nuguid’s work tells us that this story does not end in loss. In recent years, there has been a gathering tide of interest in finding these scattered notes, in piecing together a legacy nearly lost. And in August 2023, Nuguid stepped into this story with something remarkable: a published anthology of twenty-five piano pieces by sixteen Filipino composers, each work lovingly rescued, critically edited, and annotated for a new generation. The book and the concert are both an act of scholarship and an act of devotion.



You can listen to most of these piece in Horacio Nuguid’s YouTube channel. The concert was sponsored by the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council. Thanks to Dr. Elizabeth Susan Vista-Suarez for explaining the technicalities of the piano-playing for me.

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