Bax: Symphony nr. 1

The Guridi symphony rekindled my interest in the soundworld of Arnold Bax, so I gave the latter's First Symphony another audition. I am most familiar with Bax's Second and Third symphonies, which I have been listening to for a long time in the recordings by Bryden Thomson on Chandos. Now I have two complete cycles in my collection, both on Chandos: the Thomson, recorded in the mid-1980s with the London Philharmonic and the set with the BBC Philharmonic led by Vernon Handley which was taped almost 20 years later.

Bax's First has always struck me as an enormously daring statement for a beginning symphonist. Certainly, in 1921 (aged 38) Bax was a mature composer. By then he had a series of symphonic poems under his belt, not to mention the Spring Fire proto-symphony. Still, the expansive and tormented First considerably raised the stakes for the composer. But Bax acquitted himself admirably. It may not rank with the very, very best of 20th century British symphonies (say an Elgar Second, Walton First, RVW's Fourth) but it comes in my opinion very close. Whilst I like Thomson's take on the Second and Third a lot (in general I have a lot of respect for this conductor), I feel he takes a too expansive view on this particular symphony. Comparing timings between the Thomson and Handley sets learns that the former is always slower and considerably so. For the First Handley needs 32' whilst Thomson clocks in just under 37' (the difference is most outspoken in the Third with 41:51 against 49:37). Paradoxically, Thomson's first movement is by far the most unhurried of all three and this seems to me to come across pretty well. It's in the ensuing slow movement - still quite magnificent - that the reading starts to unravel. By the time the finale gets underway I felt a little lost in the overall structure. The rubbish recording may have something to do with it. It's vastly too resonant, compressing 80% of the sonic information in the upper-mid range of the frequency spectrum. Brass ring out splendidly but the lower strings and winds often have difficulty asserting themselves in the overall sound picture. I believe this affects our perception of structural coherence. The Handley recording fares slightly better but the signature is still essentially Chandos. This is why, despite all the obvious qualities of these sets, I am still looking for alternatives. I've heard good things about the 1970s recordings by Myer Fredman and Raymond Leppard on the Lyrita label and I will certainly look into those. There's also the Naxos cycle with the Scottish National Orchestra.

Immediately after listening to Bax's First I revisited the first movement of Guridi's Sinfonia Pirenaica. It's quite obvious the Bax is cut from a different cloth. It's wilder and darker and eschews anything that could be labelled as 'charming'. And when Handley asserts that Bax "is simple structurally; simple formally" it is clear that Guridi's compositional strategies are even more straightforward. Still, the Basque's symphony does not fall flat after the Bax and there is an stylistic kinship between the two.

Guridi: Sinfonia Pirenaica

Over the last few weeks I've listened to a couple of things of Jesus Guridi, a Basque composer that, until very recently, had been completely unknown to me. His Homenaje a Walt Disney for orchestra and piano is an interesting work, difficult to pigeonhole. However, the Sinfonia Pirenaica (composed in 1945) I have listened to during the last two weeks is a whole different ball game. It is a stunning, 50-minute long work that has been unjustly neglected. I'd like to compare it to Schoeck's Violin Concerto which is another work that despite its undeniable qualities has not made it to the core repertoire.

Guridi's Sinfonia is an epic work, dressed in opulent orchestral colours and bearing witness of a forceful symphonic imagination. Despite occasional glimpses of Liszt, Rachmaninov and even Nielsen, the very obvious reference for me is Arnold Bax. If I would have had to listen blindly to this work, I would not have hesitated to consider it as an hitherto unknown part of the Brit's symphonic legacy. Guridi's particular way of shaping his themes, his dark orchestral palette in which the brass play a characteristically prominent role, the occasionaly spicy harmonies: all this adds up to the sense of mystery and wildness we find in Bax's work. In this oblique sense it can indeed be considered a 'mountain symphony' (in contrast with the emphatically programmatic take on the same subject by Strauss in his Alpine Symphony). 

There are three movements. The first is a weighty opening gambit that spans almost 20 minutes. It revolves around two themes: a darkly epic invention of decidedly Baxian cut and another bouncy theme of a more folksy nature. It speaks to Guridi's compositional powers that he is able to keep the musical process consistently interesting. In fact, that's an understatement because the level of invention is so consistently high that we remain spellbound throughout this fascinating and monumental symphonic allegro. The second movement is remarkable too. It starts with a jaunty tune presented on the clarinets which is developed into a series of colourful variations marked Presto ma non troppo. The middle part of the 14-minute movement (from 5'48" onwards) is a very lengthy but ravishing nocturnal interlude essentially built around a yearning melody introduced by the strings (supposedly inspired by plainchant). Around 10'30" it morphs into a jubilant, fortissimo statement: one of the symphony's most spellbinding moments. The finale - Allegro brioso - starts with a Rachmaninovian flourish. As in the first movement Guridi bounces two contrasting but related themes of one another. The tone is hymnic and celebratory, inviting the listener to sing or whistle happily along. There is a long and chillingly beautiful coda in which Guridi moves into the ethereal harmonic territory that Vaughan Williams mapped out in his London, Pastoral and Fifth symphonies.

Altogether the Sinfonia Pirenaica is a fascinating, unabashedly neo-romantic fresco of spine-tingling beauty. The Bilbao Symphony Orchestra under Juan José Mena play with absolutely superb commitment. The recording is quite good, if only a little bit resonant to my taste (it reminds me a little of the Chandos recordings of the late 1980s with the Scottish National Orchestra). A guy such as Dudamel would do good to dig a bit deeper into this kind of repertory rather than to prematurely try to shoulder a Bruckner or a Mahler Ninth.

Debussy: Violin Sonata - Lekeu: Violin Sonata - Ravel: Violin Sonata, Tzigane - Szymanovsky: Mythes

On Wednesday I had the pleasure to accompany an American guest to a concert. Violinist Alina Ibragimova gave a recital, accompanied by Cédric Tiberghien on the piano, at the Brussels Conservatory. I hadn't really heard about Ibragimova but I was attracted by an interesting programme and I was also intrigued by the fine discography that, despite her young age, she has behind her name (including the Hartmann Concerto Funèbre on Hyperion). Furthermore, it has been many years since I have attended a performance at the Conservatory hall. As I have always enjoyed this rather quaint and slightly down at heel venue for its intimate atmosphere and excellent acoustics I was eager revisit it.

Ibragimova is incredibly petite and delicate for her age - she looks 16 rather than 25 - but she coaxes an authoritative, unfussy tone from her instrument that strikes a nice balance between warmth and cleanliness. I was surprised by how nicely the sound seemed to fill the smallest nooks of the concert hall. But what is even more impressive is Ibragimova's musical intelligence. With the elusive Debussy and the fantastic Szymanovsky, this was technically and interpretatively an intimidating programme. But both musicians seemed to rise effortlessly to the challenge. The concert started with the Debussy sonata. This was a very lucky coincidence, as I had just discovered the incredible Cello Sonata. The Violin Sonata was the last work the Debussy completed, in 1917. A balanced and concise three-movement composition, it fits very well in the mould of its sister work. Again, Debussy's supreme command of the medium strikes from the very first, quizzical bars onwards. The work oscillates between melancholy and a clenched-teeth kind of defiance. Underneath one intimates a deep sense of loss. As with the Cello Sonata, there is freedom and density, discipline and complexity. It speaks of deep wisdom and masterly craft. How striking that a 25-year old musician is able to capture and project these multi-dimensional complexities.

The Lekeu sonata is a work I used to listen to fairly often in a very early phase of my musical explorations. But it hasn't reappeared on my playlist for decades. As a composer Verviers-born Lekeu was one of Belgium's greatest promises. He wrote his admirable sonata when he was in early twenties, just a few years before his untimely death at age 24 in 1894 (from typhoid fever). The sonata is grand work, about half an hour long. It's passionately lyrical and more 'narrative', more easy to follow than the compact, mysterious Debussy sonata. I need to make sure to add this to my collection.

The Szymanovsky Mythes, op. 30, I have heard in the past (in the version with Zimerman at the piano), but they were not very familiar. These three tone poems for piano and violin sound extraordinarily sophisticated and fiendishly difficult to play. It's another work I do not have in my collection and that I urgently need to re-investigate.

Finally, the Ravel is another great sonata, urbane and refined, and a fitting conclusion to a quite marvelous recital. The textures are more translucent and less dense compared to the Debussy but there is a certain contrariness due to the two voices in this work sometimes veering off in quite different directions. As an encore we were treated to an astonishing feat of white hot virtuosity with a scorching Tzigane. Ibragimova and her partner certainly showed their mettle. An additional fact that contributed to the listening pleasure was the fact that the audience in the Conservatory hall was extremely silent during the performance. Even between breaks one couldn't hear as much as a sigh. 

Since the recital I have listened a couple of times to the Debussy sonata in a performance by Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtman (part of a 2CD Brilliant collection of various works for violin and piano). Also Ferschtman seems to have an excellent grasp of this complex work. Very striking are the flute-like effects she produces in the slow, introspective middle section of the sonata's first movement.

Of the Ravel sonata I have only a version by Chantal Juillet (a Canadian violinist married to conductor Charles Dutoit) accompanied by Pascal Rogé. I must say that compared to the live performance I heard in Brussels it sounds rather bland and unimaginative (despite it having a won a Gramophone award at the time). Also the Tzigane comes nowhere near what Ibragimova/Tiberghien treated us on. So I need to make sure I get their Hyperion disc with the Ravel and Lekeu sonatas.

Debussy: Cello Sonata

So, lately I was listening to de Falla's Canciones Espanoles in the version for cello and piano. On the Brilliant CD (with Rosler on cello and Würtz on piano) this is followed by Claude Debussy's Cello Sonata.  I hadn't heard this work before. But it was immediately clear what a brilliant, monumental composition this is. Much more substantial, it seemed to me, than the de Falla (although after hearing the version with voice and piano I have adjusted my assessment of the songs). Anyway, the sonata strikes me as an amazing work. It oozes confidence and effortless mastery over the musical medium. It is complex, dense, layered, emotionally ambiguous, classically proportioned, muscular, sharply contoured. This seems to be the work of a composer at the height of his powers. The sharp contours do surprise, particularly in the case of Debussy who made musical sfumato his trademark. But this is a work from the very final years of his life (1915) in which he was apparently moving in the direction of a more limpid neoclassicism. Also the confidence and manliness astound as the composer was already suffering from the cancer that would take his life only a few years later (in 1918). On the other hand, the 1914 German attack on France seemed to have fueled a nationalistic reflex in Debussy.

The work comes in three short movements, and is altogether merely a good ten minutes long. Another proof of the fact that stature does not at all have to be correlated with duration. One does not need one of Mahler's or Bruckner's 'symphonische Riesenschlänge' to be transported to a different world. The first movement - Prologue - seems to mix two contrasting themes: a baroque flourish (paying hommage to Couperin as icon of French culture in defiance of the aggression of the 'Boches') and a wistful, romantic theme. I'd be surprised if we were dealing here with a conventional sonata form but the music seems to be built up from clearly identifiable cells anyhow. Some commentators see in the contrast between these two themes a corroboration for an unpublished programme of the sonata that centers on the figure of a Pierrot (allegedly, Debussy first wanted to title the sonata as 'Pierrot fait fou avec la Lune'). The second movement, Sérénade, has a more playful mien because of the pronounced pizzicato character. But the abruptness and metric irregularity of the music betrays a barely concealed seriousness, however. The final movement thematically connects to the preceding and sounds like an impetuous Spanish jota, with the piano occasionally strumming like a guitar and the cello ringing out in cante jondo fashion.

The performance by Timora Rosler and Klara Würtz strikes me as very accomplished. A great find.

C.P.E. Bach - Sinfonias

A fun excursion into the pre-classical repertoire with the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. I listened four or five times to the Sinfonia Wq 183.3 performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Antonini. It's an intriguing piece, sounding surprisingly modern because of its adventurous harmonic language and gestural unpredictability. The Berliner do it really well.

I have a Philips LP with 4 other sinfonias, performed by the English Chamber Orchestra led by Raymond Leppard at the cembalo. This must be early 1970s stuff. Not all of them are equally interesting. The first movement of the Wq 177 has something of the same daring and furor as the Wq 183.3. Wq 182.5 jumps out too. In the first movement CPE makes some really weird harmonic excursions. Its Larghetto is quite seductive as well. The finale has a striking menacing and aggressive quality.

It's somewhat of a mysterious figure, this C.P.E. Bach. Nowadays his discography seems to be quite scattered. Not quite clear where to start. But in his time he was very well regarded and infuential. Mozart referred to him as 'our father'. Beethoven also paid him respect. Stylistically he has been torn between the contrapuntal approach of his father and the more cultured, homophonic style of Italian opera fashionable in his day. His sinfonias distinguish themselves by their rhapsodic forms and offbeat, sometime avant garde solutions. It seems to me today C.P.E. would make an excellent composer of film music.

Beethoven: Symphony nr. 2 - CPE Bach: Sinfonia

Following upon the audition of Giovanni Antonini's take on Beethoven's Seventh, I was intrigued to find him back in similar repertoire in the Berliner Philharmoniker's Digital Concert Hall. An interesting programme featuring an orchestral suite by Bach, a sinfonia by CPE Bach and Beethoven 2. I didn't listen to the Bach suite, but took the sinfonia as a delightfully vivid aperitif. There's a waywardness in the piece that is quite attractive. This composer merits more of my attention. Antonini's approach to the Beethoven is fully in line with the reading captured by the Klara live recording: clearly etched, dynamic, hard driven. As with the CD, I listened with considerable pleasure. And it is great to see a slimmed down Berliner digging so impassionately into the music. It's really a living, pulsating organism, not a bureaucracy that is making music there. In one way or another they are always able to create a genuine sense of occasion. On the other hand, I wonder to what extent we can really talk of an 'interpretation' here given that Antonini had at the most a single rehearsal to work with the orchestra through the symphony (I learned that from the accompanying interview). Reminds me about Berganza's remark on the quality of the music making being better 40 years ago when orchestras and singers still had several weeks to prepare an opera production. Eventually you end up with quite extraordinary situations such as the one documented on a video here where Maria Joao Pires discovers during a live concert at the Concertgebouw that she has prepared the wrong Mozart concerto. Clearly, rehearsal was not deemed necessary at all!

Anyway I certainly enjoyed this Beethoven Second. As with the Seventh I sometimes wondered whether it is really necessary to drive the orchestra to the point of near-paroxysm. There are a few shots where you can witness the amazing dexterity of the double bass players working themselves at breakneck speed through the score. Inevitably, the sound thickens and becomes less 'beautiful'. Antonini tells in the interview this is quite justified. Beauty of sound does not have to respected at all times, he thinks (referring to Karajan as someone who upheld the opposite paradigm). Sometimes the orchestra is allowed to sound ugly, as long as the unpleasantness serves the spirit of the music. Hmmm, maybe.

This week I was driving (rather lurching) with the car towards Brussels and exceptionally I had the radio on. There was the opening movement of Beethoven's Fourth. It was amazing. The orchestra sounded like a period band. What was remarkable was the beautiful ebb and flow that breathed through the music. And the effortless suppleness with which the lines where shaped. I was surprised (and yet I wasn't!) to hear about the performers: Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Now that seemed like great Beethoven ...

De Falla: 7 Canciones Populares Espanolas

My foray in Spanish repertoire continues to pay dividends. Buried in a collection of popular cello pieces issued on the superbudget Brilliant label I found an instrumental version of de Falla's Siete Canciones (billed as Suite populaire Espagnole). Klara Würtz on the piano accompanies the Israeli Timora Rossler on cello. I found it altogether an attractive but rather lightweight piece, remarkably mellifluous and replete with typically Spanish touches. However, a comparison with the original version for voice and piano more forcefully revealed the remarkable qualities of this collection. The voice was Teresa Berganza's accompanied by Juan Antonio Alvarez Parejo on the piano. This too is a Brilliant collection (3CD) that brings together a series of recordings originally issued in the mid-1980s by the Swiss label Claves. This comes 10 years later than the recital I have on a DGG LP but Berganza still sounds fresh and authoritative. The Siete Canciones is only a small part of a wide ranging programme that includes a disc with de Falla's Corregidor, a Spanish recital (encompassing work by Granados, Turina, Guridi - a full version of the Seis Canciones Castellanas - and Toldra) and a disc with Brazilian songs. In the hands of Berganza and her accompanist these de Falla songs transcend the realm of Spanish folklore. The thoughtful Asturiana, in shadowy F minor, jumps out as the emotional centre of gravity of the collection (allegedly Glenn Gould once said if he could be any key, he would be F minor, because "it's rather dour, halfway between complex and stable, between upright and lascivious, between gray and highly tinted...There is a certain obliqueness). When I returned to the version for cello and piano later on, it had gained in stature as well. But my preference remains clearly with the voice.

Beethoven: Symphony nr. 7

Yesterday at the concert we were handed an audio CD with a live performance taped at last year's Klara Festival. The programme: Beethoven's Seventh and the Triple Concerto, with the Kammerorchester Basel conducted by Giovanni Antonini. Antonini happens to be a recorder player who established the period band Il Giardino Armonico. For me the Giardino epitomises the kind of hard core period practice that transgresses the boundaries of tastefulness. On the whole I find it brutish and sensationalist, betting everything on breakneck speeds, cheap effects and course attack. I was aware of the fact that Antonini had issued some recordings of Beethoven symphonies (on the Sony and Oehms labels) but the reviews were not encouraging: "a notch faster than Toscanini", "timpani that rattle like rain on a corrugated roof", "a Fourth symphony on a war footing, brutal and unreflecting". So, evidently, when I put the CD into the reader's slot I was not very expectant. But I was pleasantly surprised. His Seventh has all the hallmarks of period performance - litheness, textural contrasts, no vibrato - and it is indeed fast, but it all seemed to stay within the bounds of reason. The introspective Allegretto was a welcome relief from the dyonisian fury in the other movements. I must say that the performance seemed to run a little out of breath in the thunderous finale. The sound compacted into a bit of a blur, leaving only an extraordinarily seismic contour to contemplate. The decent but not altogether successful radio live recording may have contributed to that effect. By way of contrast I put on an LP with a 1970s recording of the symphony, part of a set conducted by Rafael Kubelik and featuring a different orchestra for each symphony. In the Seventh the Vienna SO is absolutely glorious and I was stunned by the richness of sound that emerged from the vinyl. In comparison the CD sounded positively puny! I don't want to belittle the effort of Antonini and his band but it seems to me there is precious little new under the sun when it comes to Beethoven performances. For me a sterling traditional reading has as much, if not more to offer than the best of period performance. I don't really need a Beethoven for the 21st century. I'll continue to return to the old masters with an occasional dip into the HIP craze for refreshment.

Scriabin: Promethée, Le Poème du Feu - Liszt: Prometheus - Rachmaninov: Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini - Mussorgsky: Night on the Bald Mountain

Yesterday we were invited to a concert at the Brussels Bozar with a nice VIP package: walking dinner at the residence of the British ambassador, nice seats on the first balcony, refreshments during the concert, and dessert buffet afterwards. Thank you, WE. The London Philharmonic was visiting with an enterprising programme revolving around the dyonisian and the luciferian as twin leitmotivs. I hadn't yet heard this orchestra play under their Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski. Nikolai Lugansky took the solo part in the Rachmaninov Rhapsody, whilst remarkably enough another soloist, Igor Levit, was seated at the keyboard in the Scriabin.

I hadn't looked in great detail at the programme so I was quite shocked when the orchestra started to play Mussorgsky's Night on the Bald Mountain in the original version. I almost didn't recognise it, so different it is from the Rimsky 'recomposition' we are used to. I wouldn't say the original is technically the better piece, but it is such a wild and wacky ride that it is a treat anyhow! I looked it up and it appears that there are only very few recorded versions of this in the catalogue (luckily there is Naxos).

I heard Lugansky live before and I must say that I am not terribly taken with his rather detached mien. The Rhapsody confirmed the kind of dispassionate virtuosity that he brings to bear on musical proceedings. He was evidently also in a hurry, egging on Jurowski who made the error to follow suit which led to Lugansky pressing on even more. The final variations were predictably breathless. All in all it didn't make much of an impression on me. It certainly didn't eclipse the timeless favourite I have on CD with Bella Davidovich at the keyboard and a fairly young Neeme Järvi at the helm of a appropriately luxuriant Concertgebouw Orchestra.

After the break we proceeded with Liszt's Prometheus. Again a novelty for me. It's one of Liszt's shorter symphonic poems that started life as an overture to a cantata based on Herder's Der Entfesselte Prometheus. It offers a characteristic potpourri of the martial, the diabolical and the exultantly maestoso. Again, I was left slightly unfulfilled by a serviceable but not a great performance. It seemed to me Jurowski was a little too cautious in a piece that should be played absolutely recklessly.

Scriabin's Poème du Feu provided an appropriately impressive finale (unfortunately without Lichtstimme). You could tell that Jurowski spent most of his rehearsal time on this hyperchromatic and harmonically supersaturated Fremdkörper. Composed in 1909/10, it signals the end of an era. Soon Bartok would branch off and start to use folk music to revitalise Western art music. Just a year before, Schoenberg had written his first composition without any key (the thirteenth song of his Buch der Hängenden Gärten). And in that same year, Strauss would return from the brink of atonality with his neoclassicist Rosenkavalier. Scriabin's music sounds like a iridescent cloud, hovering above the orchestra in an unpredictable swirl of contraction and expansion and slowly edging towards that concluding and liberating F-sharp major triad. The choir, who came all the way down from Latvia, had only a few minutes of vocalisation to contribute. It's a splendid extravaganza that defies all notions of cost-effectiveness.

All in all an interesting evening with very good rather than great music making. The LPO is a fine orchestra, but not in the class of top-flight bands as, say, the Budapest Festival Orchestra. It lacks the last ounce of refinement and poise but produces an attractive, slightly husky and gritty tone. Maybe the Henry Le Boeuf Hall at the Bozar is not optimal to showcase this particular orchestra's qualities.
I can't really make up my mind about what sort of conductor Jurowski is. After the concert he spoke at length at the ambassador's residence about the programme (omitting one interesting tidbit about the Poème du Feu, namely that Scriabin started to work on it whilst he was living in Brussels). Evidently he is someone who is also interested in a conceptual grasp on the music. He is certainly to be commended to insist on adventurous programming beyond the ambit of traditional subscription concerts.

De Falla: Amor Brujo, El Sombrero de tres Picos, El Corregidor y la Molinera

 Within the realm of the nationalistically inspired, early 20th-century genre, de Falla's ballets stand out. This is music that goes far beyond the 'glorified picture postcards of come-to-sunny Spain' (Constant Lambert). In my opinion it oozes intelligence and an amazingly keen sense of orchestral colour. It is seductive and severe at the same time. There is no indulgence, not a gram of 'fat' in this music. Everything seems to have been thought through up to the tiniest detail. And yet there is this feeling of abundance, of warmth and insouciance.

I have only one version of De Falla's key ballets in my collection and I have been perfectly happy with these early 1970s recordings. The Three-Cornered Hat is performed by the Boston SO under Ozawa, whilst Love the Magician is offered by the LSO conducted by Garcia Navarro. Despite the differences in orchestra and recording venue, the set feels like a whole. Both conductors seem to admirably have captured the spirit of this music. Teresa Berganza's voice in the vocal tracks functions as an additional 'traît d'union'. The recordings are warm and not as sharply contoured as we are used to nowadays but I personally love this kind of old-fashioned sound.

The Corregidor is, in fact, an early pantomime version (1915) of what would become a few years later, at the request of the Ballets Russes' Diaghilev, a full-fledged ballet. It is scored for a small ensemble of about 20 musicians. I listened to a recording by the chamber ensemble established by Josep Pons, who is nowadays Principal Conductor with the Spanish National Orchestra. Those familiar with the Sombrero will not find a lot of suprises. The two scores seem to have an awful lot in common (although I would like to read Carol Hess' assessment; she writes that the material for the Corregidor "assumed an entirely different attitude in the hands of Sergei Diaghilev"). I must say I was not terribly captivated by this recording. Surely the playing seems of a very high standard, with marvelous soloistic contributions throughout. However, the thinner instrumentation reinforces the recording's extreme, close-miked transparancy and as a result the music loses some its essential, seductive character. In addition I was annoyed by the choice of tempos, particularly in the slower pieces. Maybe Pons wanted to maintain (or underscore) the character of a pantomime by taking the numbers at a very deliberate speed. Very soon, however, this comes across as an irritating mannerism.

The Corregidor is complemented on this disc by a strange collection of old Spanish folk songs collected (or re-composed? it's not quite clear) by the poet Federico Garcia Lorca (who was closely acquainted with De Falla). They are performed by Ginesa Ortega, who seems to be a flamenco singer. I don't find it an attractive voice at all. It's likely the point as these songs are in the tradition of the cante jondo (literally: 'deep song') which is seen as the aboriginal Iberian music. Lorca wrote:

The "cante jondo" approaches the rhythm of the birds and the natural music of the black poplar and the waves; it is simple in oldness and style. It is also a rare example of primitive song, the oldest of all Europe, where the ruins of history, the lyrical fragment eaten by the sand, appear live like the first morning of its life.

It seems to be an acquired taste, though. I couldn't really latch on to it.

I've been looking into other work of de Falla. There is not a lot. Altogether he left only a tiny oeuvre. There is of course the Noches en las Jardinas de Espana which I don't have in my collection. In addition the Harpsichord Concerto, the one-act opera La Vida Breve, the puppet opera El Retablo de Maese Pedro and the elusive late magnum opus, the scenic cantata La Atlantida on which he worked for decades but left unfinished. Of the latter there is only an historical recording with Thomas Schippers who conducted the premiere at La Scala.

Guridi: Homenaje a Walt Disney, Euzko Irudiak

I picked up on the hint provided by the Berganza recital and ordered a disc with music by Basque composer Jesus Guridi, issued by the Swiss label Claves (meanwhile it has already disappeared from the catalogue). The Homenaje a Walt Disney is a 25-minute fantasia for piano and orchestra. It is a late work, from 1956, and difficult to position stylistically and emotionally. I'm hearing echoes of Rachmaninov and Messiaen, Stravinsky and Bax. Altogether it sounds more Celtic or Slavic than Iberian. The structure is mosaic-like, with contrasting sections piled on top of one another, seemingly without regard for a deeper symphonic logic. That doesn't mean the music isn't interesting. Arguably the keyboard writing seems a little dull, but the thematic material is fascinating and the overall atmosphere is curiously reflective. Only occasionally the music veers towards the cartoonish. Mostly it is deeply introspective and even tenderhearted. There's a curious attraction to this piece and I will be happy to return to it.

The other interesting work on this CD is Euzko Irudiak (Basque Images), a much earlier (1922) tone poem (originally conceived for the theater) for choir and orchestra. It's very accessible music in a folksy idiom that makes reference to the Basques' relationship to the sea. Particularly the final Eszpatadantza doesn't fail to make an impact, not in the least through the excellent singing of the redoubtable Orfeon Donostiarra (literally: choir of San Sebastian). This is one of the world's best known amateur choirs, 170 head strong, that performs with the greatest orchestras and conductors around (a Mahler Resurrection with Abbado and Paavo Järvi, to name just two recent recordings).

There are two other works included on the CD - Diez Melodias Vascas (1941) and Una Aventura de Don Quijote (1916) - which are less interesting. Whilst the Diez Melodias allegedly are Guridi's best known symphonic work, with their colourful, but rather simple tonal language I feel they belong more in the repertoire of amateur orchestras.

The music is competently played by the Basque National Orchestra under Miguel Gomez Martinez (it looks like Andrei Boreyko, who will be chief conductor at the Belgian National Orchestra from 2012 onwards is Principal Guest Conductor with the orchestra). The recording is lively and clean but curiously misses depth.