MSO celebrates centennial with world premiere of new composition ‘Pasasalamat’

The Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO) marked its 100th anniversary with a concert that brought together works by Gabriel Fauré and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, alongside the world premiere of “Pasasalamat,” a new choral-orchestral composition by National Artist for Music Ryan Cayabyab with text by National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario.

Performed with PUP Bagong Himig Serenata at the Proscenium Theater in Makati on Thursday, the new work gave the centennial concert a distinctly Filipino dimension, with music as a way to reflect on the country’s realities, confront its failings, and recognize the people who continue to endure them.

Founded by Alexander Lippay in 1926, the MSO is among Asia’s oldest orchestras and one of the Philippines’ longest-surviving artistic institutions. Throughout its century of performances, it has played a role in the country’s cultural history, including serving as a symbol of resistance during World War II.

Led by principal conductor Marlon Chen, the evening moved from Gabriel Fauré’s “Requiem, Op. 48,” to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33,” featuring Franco-Belgian cellist Camille Thomas, before culminating in Cayabyab and Almario’s new work.

The MSO set a deeply reverent tone with “Requiem,” known more for its peaceful, consoling character than an overwhelming focus on death and judgment.  

The orchestra, accompanied by the PUP Bagong Himig Serenata and soloists Ruzzel Clemeno and Angeli Benipayo, delivered a restrained and emotionally resonant opener for the concert. 

Fauré, a French composer and organist, was known for his songs, piano works, and chamber music. His “Requiem,” a mass for the dead, remains among his best-known large-scale compositions.

For Benipayo, the work called for a different approach from the operas, art songs, and kundiman she usually performs. Rather than projecting the full force of an operatic voice, she explained that the sacred composition required a more restrained delivery that conveyed solemnity and a prayerful feeling.

She described Fauré’s “Requiem” as “very heavenly,” distinguishing it from other requiems that focus more heavily on death and judgment. Its effect, she said, felt more intimate, as though offering comfort to those left behind.

The seven movements unfolded throughout the performance, culminating in “In Paradisum.” The choir’s soaring vocals blended with the orchestra’s gentle instrumentation, drawing the hall into a moment of silence before the applause broke out.

The choir would return later in the evening for a work that, despite its title, would ask listeners to reckon with something beyond gratitude.

Thomas took the stage for Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme,” accompanied by the MSO under Chen’s direction.

Her marigold-colored gown, with its feather-like ruffles, made a striking visual impression. As she played, her movements and expressions became part of the performance, drawing attention not only to the sound of the cello but also to the physicality of making music.

Chen, meanwhile, shaped the orchestra’s presence through his conducting, moving between sharp, measured motions and broader, more fluid motions. The visual contrast between the conductor’s direction and Thomas’ close engagement with her instrument offered another way to appreciate the performance, even for listeners without a technical background in classical music.

As an unexpected gift to the Filipino audience, Thomas returned to the stage for three encores that were not part of the evening’s program: Camille Saint-Saëns’ “The Swan,” the Prelude from Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 6,” and Pablo Casals’ “Song of the Birds.”

The selections offered different reasons for returning to the stage. Thomas chose “The Swan,” a French composition, partly to share French music with Filipino audiences and to collaborate with an MSO musician. 

For her final encore, she turned to Casals’ “Song of the Birds,” a piece associated with the cellist’s advocacy for peace around the world.

“I hope I look like a bird,” she jokingly said before performing the final piece. 

In an interview after the concert, Thomas offered another invitation to the audience: “Hope you come [to] more classical concerts.”

Her words were simple, but the evening’s final major work offered a compelling reason to take that invitation seriously. 

The concert reached its climax with the world premiere of “Pasasalamat,” a new work by Cayabyab featuring text by Almario. Commissioned specifically for the MSO’s 100th anniversary, the composition brought the evening to an uplifting yet thought-provoking close. 

MSO Foundation executive director and associate director Jeffrey Solares shared how the project came about. He recalled that Cayabyab posted on Facebook the previous year that he was considering writing a choral symphony, a symphonic work involving a choir. Solares immediately sent the composer a private message, eventually leading to the work’s creation for the orchestra’s centennial.

Chen led the MSO and the PUP Bagong Himig Serenata once again through Cayabyab’s dynamic score, turning the poem’s themes into a shared musical experience.

Benipayo said the piece differed from what audiences might expect from Cayabyab, whose music is widely associated with popular songs. Its unusual musical approach, complex chord progressions between the choir and orchestra, and experimental rhythms challenged the performers.

At times, the choir’s delivery felt slow and almost heavenly, allowing the words to linger rather than pass quickly through the hall. Each line seemed to be given room to settle, as though asking the audience to consider not only what the poem said, but also what its words might mean to Filipinos who have grown accustomed to hearing them.

The effect could be unsettling, though not in a frightening sense. There was a weight to the voices, a quality that felt almost authoritative: not simply a reminder of what people should value, but a quiet insistence that they should act on it.

Then came passages when the orchestra swelled into something more epic, evoking the score of a group preparing to face a battle. When the words “Iisa ang ating planeta” were repeated, the combined voices and orchestra seemed to gather people under a common cause, turning the line into a declaration of shared responsibility.

That sense of collective purpose grew more forceful in the poem’s repeated “laban sa…” lines, which challenge politics without principles, dishonor, lies, and deception. The repetition felt less like a list of grievances than a gradual build toward a larger demand: gratitude must not mean passively accepting the conditions people are asked to survive.

The work’s closing thought, “Madali lang maging tao, mahirap magpakatao,” brought that challenge into sharp focus. 

In this reading, “Pasasalamat” is not simply a thanksgiving piece. It holds gratitude and resistance together. To give thanks for having endured is also to acknowledge what made endurance necessary, and to ask what must change so that survival does not become the only thing people can celebrate.

At the heart of “Pasasalamat” was PUP Bagong Himig Serenata, whose performance was among the evening’s memorable highlights. 

The ensemble sounded remarkably accomplished, particularly striking their performance with a simple quality of sound and bringing their individual abilities together through a common love of music.

Founded in 1969, Bagong Himig Serenata has developed an identity that connects music with the university and the public. Choir master and artistic director Mark Gregory Isip said the group brings together members with different levels of experience. Some had sung in church or school choirs before joining, while others were first-time choristers who learned to read musical notes through the group’s training.

Isip described his role as helping shape the members’ talents, with the ensemble’s quality growing through their collective effort and willingness to support one another.

The group’s guiding mantra, he said, is “Mula sa iisang himig, para sa bayan.” Its performances are free of charge, reflecting an advocacy of sharing music with the public, including communities within and beyond PUP.

That philosophy resonates with the message of “Pasasalamat.” The choir’s commitment to making music accessible echoes the poem’s call to look beyond individual gratitude and consider the conditions people share.

The ensemble’s performance also carried a personal dimension as their members had academic responsibilities to manage while preparing a demanding composition in a limited amount of time. 

Isip said the group had about a month to prepare, with rehearsals complicated by the members’ differing schedules and the demands of midterm week. Despite the challenges, he described the preparation as a “happy stress,” reflecting the fulfillment that came with bringing the group together for the performance.

For student ensemble member Dave Stephen Llaguno, mastering the piece came with challenges and hurdles.  

“Parang ang… take namin sa choir, naghahanap kami ng parang puwede naming kapitan na tono or patterns… Naghahanap kami ng beat na puwede naming timing-an na mapasukan ‘yong passage namin. Pero this time kasi, parang sa sobrang daming nangyayari sa piyesa ni Sir Ryan, parang ‘di namin alam kung saan kami papasok no’ng una,” he said. 

That effort could be heard in the way the choir blended with the orchestra, but it also gives the performance another layer of meaning. The same spirit of collective work that helped the students prepare for the concert is reflected in the work’s larger themes of endurance, shared responsibility, and the difficulty of living up to one’s ideals.

And as the final lines of “Pasasalamat” lingered, the work left listeners with a question that reached beyond the stage: if being human is easy but becoming humane is difficult, what responsibilities come with the gratitude we express?