In commemoration of Women’s Month, world-acclaimed Filipina pianist Cecile Licad will be presented with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, in a special concert on Tuesday, March 19, 7 p.m., at the Metropolitan Theater.

Described by the New Yorker as “a pianist’s pianist,”  Licad is the first Filipino recipient of the Leventritt Gold Medal, the same award that went to piano icons Van Cliburn and Gary Graffman.

A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Merit by President Corazon C. Aquino and Pamana sa Pilipino Award by President Benigno Aquino, Jr. Licad is also recipient of the Gawad CCP in the field of Music.

The invitational event brings together a distinguished audience in a special program consisting of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23 with Licad as soloist and Brahms Symphony No. 2 with the PPO under the baton of Maestro Grzegorz Nowak.

Invited to the concert are dignitaries from the Senate, government officials, members of the diplomatic corps, business leaders, socio-civic stalwarts, educators from state colleges and universities, young artists, and music students from various universities.

The Women’s Month concert is spearheaded by Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda, Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Culture and the Arts, in collaboration with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) with its Chairman Ino Manalo, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) headed by Chairman Jaime Laya, and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra Society, Inc. led by the late President Zenaida Tantoco.

Licad’s recordings received high ratings from music critics one of whom raved over her all-Gottchalk CD: “Cecile Licad may have been groomed under Rudolf Serkin’s exacting tutelage, but her visceral, exuberant Gottschalk playing evokes Vladimir Horowitz’s diabolical art. It’s not just speed and accuracy that Licad brings to the impossible repeated notes in Le banjo or Tremolo, but also impulsive dynamic surges and fustian drama. Her nimble, skywritten runs in La jota aragonesa simply take your breath away, as do her exquisitely shaped soft chords.”

Described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “one of the great flaming talents that comes along one or two times in every generation,” Licad is teaming up for the first time  with the new music director of the PPO, Maestro Grzegorz Nowak, a first prize winner of the Ernest Ansermet International Conducting Competition in Geneva.