50 AÑOS SIN EMMA CHACÓN

Emma Chacon was born in Barcelona in 1886. She received the education of a young bourgeois. A favourite pupil of Granados she was taught harmony, counterpoint and composition. In 1912 she married Jose Ribera and moved to Bilbao as her husband was a representative of a Catalan textile company. In the following years Emma had nine children, which did not prevent her from pursuing her passion, music, always with an indifferent attitude, detached from any professional intentions.

Her early compositions were in the genre that was then “allowed” for women: song for voice and piano, although she went on to write some orchestral compositions in her more mature years. Emma never stopped playing or composing. In the restricted confines of her home where she had a room for the piano, and her husband another for painting, on the radio, or at benefit concerts, she performed her own works, something very common at that time in history.

Musically Emma’s works are as valuable, if not more so, than those of any of her contemporaries. Yet they are hardly known, let alone programmed, so 2022, the 50th anniversary of her death, is a good time to give her a rightful place. Some of her music was recorded in 2020 in the CD Ineditas, la voz invisible de las compositoras (the invisible voice of female composers) and which we were able to enjoy at Arriaga Theatre in Bilbao. Now, this concert allows us to take a closer look at the legacy of Emma Chacon, one of the great composers whose music should remain on stage and not in drawers.