Edgar Valcárcel

Edgar Valcárcel, born in Puno on 4 December 1932, is one of the most promising Peruvian composers and pianists of his generation. His work belongs to the current of Latin American music that, without renouncing its roots, seeks to engage with contemporary idioms.

His training was itinerant. He studied at the Conservatorio Nacional in Lima, at Hunter College in New York, at the Instituto Di Tella in Buenos Aires and at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. As a performer, he frequently appeared as a piano soloist with the Lima Symphony Orchestra and played in concerts of the Pan American Union in Washington. In 1965 he was appointed professor of composition at the Lima Conservatory.

Valcárcel considers himself a composer with a Peruvian outlook, although he was trained abroad. Like many Latin American musicians of his generation, he acknowledges the weight of indigenous roots without falling into narrow nationalism. His music follows the most recent technical and aesthetic trends and actively promotes new music from Europe and North America, yet he maintains that Latin America's role is to forge a language of its own from both native and Western sources. Research into pre-Columbian music has suggested some possibilities for that synthesis.

His early works show the search for a personal style; later, his technical mastery becomes evident in chamber pieces such as Espectros I and Hiwaña uru. Among his orchestral works, the Piano Concerto offers a particularly accomplished solo writing, but the Checán series, whose title means 'love' in the Mochica language, is perhaps his most representative contribution. The Canto coral a Tupac Amaru, in two parts, is another important work which, it seems, has outlived its immediate political intent.

His legacy lies in having combined experimentation with electronics and an exploration of the country's cultural roots, leaving a broad catalogue that encompasses orchestra, choir, chamber music and piano.