CONCURSO INTERNACIONAL DE PIANO COMPOSITORES DE ESPAÑA

Las Rozas de Madrid, Spain

WFIMC: Please tell us the background, history and legacy of your competition.

María Herrero: The C.I.P.C.E. (Concurso Internacional de Piano Compositores de España) is held annually in November at the Auditorio Joaquín Rodrigo in Las Rozas. This event was born from the different competitions visited since 1991, which is when my husband, Leonel Morales arrived in Spain from his native country, Cuba. When we met at the age of 27, we visited different competitions in which he was a contestant, awarded on different occasions, and I was a spectator and observer with great enthusiasm.

We were giving shape to all the good ideas we had gathered, and so the idea was born to form a competition in Spain with a typical characteristic: the promotion of the music of our Spanish composers. Finally, we decided to present the Competition, which is dedicated annually to a Spanish composer, promoting all his piano works internationally by pianists of different nationalities.

In this way, during the Competition, we have always heard the entire piano production of the composers honoured at the CIPCE and not just one imposed work.

Furthermore, in order to give freedom to the contestants, they are free to choose the works they wish to perform, apart from the Spanish piece to be performed in the 2nd round of the competition. The rest of the repertoire is completely free to choose by the participant, always adapting it to the time limits of each phase, and in the final round they will be able to choose a concert with orchestra from a long list.

This makes it very enjoyable and interesting for the audience, who are left with an overall idea of the music written by the composer. We are very flattered to receive many congratulations from the contemporary composers of all the previous editions, and proud to revive the music of the Spanish classics: Antón García Abril, Xavier Montsalvatge, Tomás Marco, Carlos Cruz de Castro, Joaquín Rodrigo, Zulema de la Cruz, Gabriel Fernández Álvez, Claudio Prieto, Cristóbal Halffter, Joaquín Turina, José Zárate and Salvador Brotons, Isaac Albéniz, Miguel A. Gómez Martínez, Juan Medina, Alejandro Román, Juan Manuel Ruiz, Jose Luis Turina, Juan Durán, Pascual Gimeno and reaching 2022 with Enrique Granados.

Our Competition promotes Spanish works through its winners, because once the competition is over, our goal does not end here.

We programme recitals for the winners of the different prizes in different venues in which we continue to perform Spanish music that they have already played during the different phases of the competition, as well as the free programme performed during the development of the competition. In this way, we ensure that the winning pianist will have the highest quality performances representing the International Piano Competition Compositores de España (Las Rozas) in different venues in Spain and abroad.