He’s not only Panama’s greatest composer. He’s Panama’s ONLY composer. At least according to Roque Cordero, stated half-jokingly in an interview he gave in 1989, when he had just turned 72 years-old.
Cordero’s music tends to balance Panamanian folklore with more advanced techniques, as exemplified in perhaps his most frequently performed work, the “Eight Miniatures for Small Orchestra” of 1948.
More challenging is his Violin Concerto from 1962. I only just came across a concert performance of the piece from 2010 with Rachel Barton Pine as soloist – in the work’s Panamanian premiere? – which I’m adding to the links below.
I was already familiar with the concerto from Paul Freeman’s “Black Composers Series,” which originally appeared on vinyl, on Columbia Records, back in the 1970s (reissued as a box set of CDs by Sony Classical only in 2019). Sanford Allen was the soloist in the world premiere recording. Barton Pine’s performance is distinguished not only by her characteristically superb commitment, but also because the concert actually took place in the composer’s home town of Panama City. Cordero was born there on this date in 1917.
He won a scholarship to pursue music education at the University of Minnesota. There he studied conducting with Dmitri Mitropolous. It was Mitropolous who introduced him to Ernst Krenek, with whom he studied composition at Hamline University. (Mitropolous, recognizing his promise, paid all his expenses.)
Back in Panama, Cordero became director of the National Music Institute and was appointed artistic director and conductor of the Panama National Symphony. Later, he was assistant director of the Latin American Music Center, professor of composition at Indiana University, and, from 1972, distinguished professor emeritus at Illinois State University. He died in Dayton, Ohio, in 2008, at the age of 91.
“I am Panamanian,” he told Bruce Duffie, in the 1989 interview linked below. “I am not an American citizen, simply because I represent something to my country. If I become an American citizen, I would be just one more composer of the United States. I am a composer from Panama. When you read about me, you will find that I am the only composer from Panama, and because I am the only one, I am called the best. If there were two, I wouldn’t be the best [laughs], and I have to be the best. Unfortunately, Panama doesn’t have a musical tradition. How I became a composer is a mystery to me, and to anyone who has studied the music of Latin America.”
Start with the “Adagio trágico” or “Sonatina Rítmica.” Then move on to “Eight Miniatures for Small Orchestra.” When you feel like your ears are awake, only then, check out Barton Pine’s performance of Cordero’s Violin Concerto.
Happy birthday, Roque Cordero!
“Adagio trágico” (1946-55), begun after the death of the composer’s mother; taken up again after the assassination of Panamanian President José Antonio Remón Cantera, whose wife had been one of Cordero’s benefactors
“Sonatina Rítmica” (1943)
“Eight Miniatures for Small Orchestra” (1948)
Symphony No. 2 (1957)
Violin Concerto (1962)
Interview with Bruce Duffie