Audio Recordings

Roque Cordero’s Adagio trágico

This week’s Audio Flashback is Adagio trágico by Panamanian-born composer Roque Cordero. Cordero first started working on the piece in 1946, after the death of his mother. He then set it aside, completing it only in 1955 after another tragic event: the assassination of Panamanian President José Antonio Remón Cantera, whose wife, Cecilia Pinel de Remón, had been a benefactor of Cordero’s. TŌN performed the work with conductor Andrés Rivas on September 19, 2020 as part of the “Out of the Silence” festival, presented with the Bard Music Festival and the Fisher Center at Bard. You can read the concert notes, written by Peter Laki, Visiting Associate Professor of Music at Bard College, by clicking here.