Braga Santos: Symphony nr. 4, Symphonic Variations

Joly Braga Santos (1924-1988) was the leading figure in mid-to-late 20th century Portuguese musical life. Surprisingly, I can't recall having any other work of a Portuguese composer in my collection. So this is a double first.

Braga Santos initially drew my attention through the many positive reviews on Amazon. This particular recording has garnered 13 five-star reviews on Amazon.com. Was I really missing out on a major 20th century composer?

After having listened to his big, muscular Symphony nr. 4 I must confess to being surprised that this music is not more widely known and recorded. Learning that this 53 minute work flowed out of the pen of 27 year old man was a genuine shock. The grandiosity of the conception and the almost casual surefootedness of the writing made me suspect a much older and more mature composer. Based on the Fourth, I would not hesitate to label Braga Santos as the 'Iberian Sibelius'. It is particularly the brash and warmhearted lyricism of the younger Sibelius (from the time of, say, the First and Second Symphony) that is such a distinctive feature of Braga Santos' idiom. It is music that immediately appeals, also, I suspect, to people who are less attuned to classical music. The noble, sweeping and distinctive melodies, the uncluttered harmonies, engaging rhythms and the conventional architecture do not pose a great challenge to the listener. One would almost think it's a Mediterranean brand of Socialist Realism (Portugal had indeed been under Salazarism's sway for decades when Braga Santos wrote this work). Anyway, despite the accessibility and the epic scope of the work there are no longueurs. It doesn't scale the heights of, say, a Sibelius Second or even a Rubbra Seventh. I'd put it in the same bracket as Guridi's Sinfonia Pyrenaica: a product of a sensitive and honest and occasionally even genuinely inspired craftsman. It certainly deserves to be more widely heard than it is now.

The other work on this disc is equally captivating. The Symphonic Variations on popular song from the Alentejo (1951) is an excellent, rousing piece, again featuring those typically Sibelian fingerprints.

The Marco Polo recording deserves full marks. The National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland led by an experienced Alvaro Cassuto delivers an committed and idiomatic performance. Altogether a great find. We'll certainly investigate this further.

De Falla: The Three Cornered Hat, Nights in the Gardens of Spain - Debussy: Images - Chabrier: Espana - Moszkowski: Spanish Dances

The Decca Sound box is a jewel. Martinon's take on the Ibert Divertissement made me jump out of my listening chair and the same thing happened when I put on Ansermet's classic 1961 version of De Falla's Three Cornered Hat. Wow, how this music sparkles and glows! There is a liveliness and truthfulness in this recording that is otherwise reserved for vinyl. It is as if you are standing at Ansermet's desk. The Suisse Romande orchestra fans out around you and all the desks are as crisply audible as you could wish for. The sound is dynamic, spacious, layered, texturally rich and finelly chisseled. And, what is most extraordinary is that the musicians have faces. That is very rare in a CD recording but much more common with LPs. I've never particularly taken to Ansermet, but now I could for the first time appreciate the mastery of his conducting. Although the old maths teacher looks the part of a stodgy Kapellmeister, he is not. To the contrary, the music has plenty of fire whilst maintaining an almost classical poise. Unbelievable that Ansermet was already well beyond 70 when he recorded these works. The 'bonus' on this same disc is a recording of Debussy's Images (the 'bonus' comes on top of the music that is referred to on the original LP sleeves). It's as good, if not better, than any I have heard recently. Again, the recording is stellar with the French composer's awesome mastery of orchestration on hi-fidelity display.

I followed up with a collection of Spain-inspired pieces - Chabrier's Espana and a set of Spanish Dances by Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925). This is a 1957 Kingsway Hall recording that sounds as fresh and buoyant as if it was recorded yesterday. There is none of the astringency or boxyness that characterises many older recordings. The music is not particularly great but Ataulfo Argenta's reading with the London SO makes for a superbly entertaining intermezzo. Honestly, I'd never heard of this guy but his amazing bio on wikipedia makes for compulsory reading.

Finally, De Falla's nocturnal Gardens with Alicia De Larrocha and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos leading the London Philharmonic. This is a more recent digital recording from 1983. Clearly a very different sound picture. The crackling freshness has made way for an opulence that I usually associate with the Concertgebouw in their eponymous hall. Needless to say it fits this music - with its dark Rachmaninovian splendour - particularly well. De Larrocha and de Burgos draw us into a world of moody contemplation, eschewing orchestral pyrotechnics in favour of a somberly lyrical take on the score. Just letting this music wash over you, slumped in your listening chair, glass of wine in hand, is a superbly hedonistic indulgence.

Ibert: Divertissement, Escales

I have some catching up to do. Over the past week I've been listening to yet another French composer whose work I am barely familiar with. I had only Jacques Ibert's Divertissement (1928) on a Chandos CD coupled with works by Milhaud and Poulenc. At the time it struck me as a fun but utterly unremarkable piece. Fun it certainly is, but it seems there is a better case to be made for this music that Yan Pascal Tortelier did on that Chandos collection (with the Ulster Orchestra).

Divertissement is a 15-minute suite of 6 numbers drawn from incidental music Ibert wrote for a farce written by Eugène Labiche (in 1851). It's an improbable story about a horse that eats a straw hat from which follows a series of burlesque tableaux culminating in complete mayhem. Ibert's suite - a raucous, nose-thumping pastiche - captures the mood perfectly. I listened first to a Dorian recording by the Dallas SO led by Eduardo Mata. The disc is part of a superb 6-CD collection ('The Eduardo Mata Years') that includes many of Mata's best recordings in colourful 20th century repertoire (Shostakovich 7 and 9, Prokofiev's Nevsky, Stravinsky's Sacre, Respighi's suites, a few American scores and, remarkably, Chausson's Symphony). All the recordings date from the early 1990s. Mata presents a finely groomed, almost phlegmatic version of the suite, an impression that is reinforced by a sophisticated, somewhat distant recording. It's as if one is safely ensconced on the 20th row of the rather splendid but empty Eugene McDermott Hall in Meyerson Symphony Centre. It's impressive enough to listen to.

But I was quite surprised to hear what Jean Martinon and his Paris Conservatory Orchestra made of it in their 1960 recording at the Maison de la Mutualité in Paris. This recording is part of the recently issued 50-CD collection 'The Decca Sound'. It's an eclectic but truly glorious selection of recordings to showcase 60 years of engineering excellence from the Decca labs. In 'Originals' fashion all the cardboard slipcases present the original LP artwork. Quite nice. Compared to the Dorian recording, the Martinon disc - featuring work by Ibert, Saint-Saens, Bizet and, as a 'bonus' his 1958 taping of Borodin's Second Symphony with the LSO - provides a totally different sonic picture. One is at the conductor's desk with the musicians arrayed closely around. In no way, however, the recording sounds boxy. There is a pleasing ambience around the instruments. I don't know whether all of these discs have been especially remastered for this collection but I wouldn't be surprised if they were. There is a fair amount of tape hiss on this one, but it's not at all unpleasant or distracting. What is striking is the fantastic liveliness, almost in an analogue fashion, of the recorded sound. The slightly nasal tonal balance reinforces this vinyl-like quality. The Divertissement is a real treat. One can hear that Martinon and his band are having a ball, yawning trumpets, barking horns and police wistle included. But there is more. I was struck by the interpretative complexity that Martinon was able to coax from these harmless pages. By no means he turns them into a Mahler Ninth. The typical French esprit remains very much in evidence. But still, the Nocturne probes unsuspected depths, the Valse pearls like champagne and the Parade vacillates between a nightly patrol and Comedy Capers. I came away refreshed and invigorated from listening to this music, likely very much how Ibert had intended it to be!

Finally there is Escales ('Ports of Call'), a work I hadn't heard before. It's a luscious suite with three colourful postcards from Mediterranean ports in Italy, Tunisia and Spain respectively. Ibert relishes in exploring the musical clichés associated to these locales - Arabian melody and castanets included. His mastery of the orchestra is a treat and Eduardo Mata is quite happy to let his players indulge in the marvelous colours and scents conjured by the score. I thought the Rome-Palerme movement was particularly captivating. A symphonic spectacular if there ever was one.

Debussy: Ibéria - Turina: Danzas Fantasticas and other orchestral works

It's holiday period and we are at my parents' place in France. Time to catch up with some reading, movie watching and listening. First I checked what music of Debussy my dad has in his CD collection. Which is not a lot. One of the few discs is an early digital recording (1981) on the Telarc label, featuring the Mexican maestro Eduardo Mata and his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Debussy's Ibéria. This is one of his most celebrated orchestral scores. It's a tryptich within the larger tryptich of the Images pour orchestre, written between 1905 and 1912. I must confess that this is not the Debussy that I really love. The music is colourful and brilliantly evocative but to my mind it misses the epic sweep that is characteristic for the late works.

Anyway I passed some enjoyable hours comparing three versions with one another. The Mata recording I liked a lot. It's a broad and spacious reading but very, very polished. Maybe the last movement - Le matin d'un jour de fêtes - should have had a little more fire. Anyway the Dallas SO were a splendid body of musicians at that time and their artistry has been beautifully captured by the then revolutionary Soundstream technology. It's a very airy and detailed, but also weighty and balanced sound. Telarc has never done better than in those early years of digital. That is all too obvious when we compare the 1981 recording with a recent issue in SACD format on the same label. This time it is Jesus Lopez-Cobos with the Cincinatti SO in his valedictory recording in 2001 with the orchestra after more than two decades as chief conductor. The sound is flat and lifeless and whatever the qualities of the orchestral playing, they are not able to shine. I really get very annoyed when I hear this kind of anesthetised sound reproduction. There must be logic - commercial or otherwise - behind this progressive erosion of recording quality but it eludes me.

The third and last version is a 1952 recording with the Grand Orchestre Symphonique de l'INR (otherwise known as the Belgian National Radio Symphony Orchestra) conducted by Franz André, available for download via the Pristine Classical website. This was a very pleasant discovery, and proof of the fact that fifty years ago we had orchestras in our country that could compete at an international level. Franz André, who had been leading the orchestra from the 1920s onward, recorded a significant body of work issued as Telefunken LPs. The orchestra was also famous for giving premieres of important new works. Unbelievably enough NIR orchestra gave the first European performance of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra in Paris and the first West European performance of the Fourth Symphony by Shostakovich. The Debussy recording has been expertly restored by Pristine's Andrew Rose from an original Telefunken LP, pressed in the UK by Decca. It's a great performance, very animated and tense, quite the opposite of the approach taken by Eduardo Mata. But despite the less sophisticated sonics (still very good though) it is an equally enjoyable experience.

I also listened to the orchestral works by Joaquin Turina that complemented Debussy's Iberia on the Lopez-Cobos disc: the three Danzas Fantasticas (op. 22), the Sinfonia Sevillana (op. 23) and the earlier Procesion del Rocio (op. 9). All very colourful aural postcards from Spain but nothing to my mind that really jumps out. The Sinfonia Sevillana is a collection of three tone poems - similar to Ibéria - rather than a work that is underpinned by a unifying symphonic logic. The most engaging piece, maybe, is the Procesion which raucously winds its way through the streets of Seville every year just before Christmas.

Rodrigo: Fantasia para un gentilhombre

Another great LP, this collection of two of Rodrigo's most popular compositions by Charles Dutoit and the Montreal orchestra. The recording dates from 1981 and hence is a very early digital recording. However, the sound is absolutely glorious: spacious, richly layered, dynamic, warm yet detailed. It belies the cliché that all early digital productions were plagued by harsh and glassy sound. Apparently the Decca engineers knew what they were doing.

Of these two compositions the Fantasia para un gentilhombre is very much my favourite. Rodrigo wrote it in 1954 at the request of Andres Segovia. It is a superbly poised, gracious work with luminous chamber music-like textures. Structurally it is conceived as a sequence of four movements, based on six dances which Rodrigo pulled from a 17th century instructional work for guitar. Dutoit and his band are very skillfull in drawing out the work's jewel-like qualities, revelling in  the score's many soloistic passages and producing a superbly polished orchestral sound in the denser passages. I've always been impressed by the engaging performance of the solo part by British guitarist Carlos Bonell. Always a pleasure to return to.

Debussy: Jeux - Ravel: Rhapsodie Espagnole

Some more late Debussy with Jeux, his last and also what is generally regarded his most accomplished and enigmatic orchestral score. Originally written as 'poème dansé' for the Ballets Russes, it was premiered in 1913 by Pierre Monteux and then largely forgotten, supposedly because of its banal scenario (a boy and two girls frolic in a garden at dusk; their game is interrupted by a stray tennis ball). De Sabata recorded it for the first time in 1947 (apparently still available at Testament) and in the 1950s it started to be taken up by a number of francophone conductors (Cluytens, Ansermet, Munch, and again Monteux).

Allegedly Debussy did not like the ballet's plot, but he was ill with cancer and in debt and Dhiagilev paid him 10.000 gold francs to write the score. All of the 700 bars of Jeux were written in just a matter of three weeks in August 1913. Maybe the speed of writing helps to explain the very particular character of this piece. It is as fellow-composer Kevin Volans once wrote about how painter Philip Guston inspired him by his way of working: " ... in an effort to get away from form and into the material, he stood close up to the canvas, working quickly and not stepping back to look until the work was finished." Reflecting on his own quartet The Songlines Volans writes: "I juxtaposed very different kinds of music in the order they occured to me, not thinking ahead, and allowing the material to unfold at its own pace. If there was a 'sense of form' at work, it was covert. However, I didn't use everything that occured to me. I tried to follow Guston's suggestion of 'eliminating both that which is yours already and that which is not yet yours' - in other words, keeping only that which is becoming yours."

I feel this perfectly captures the kaleidoscopic nature of this score in which there are 60 tempo markings and in which myriads of one or two bar motives have been identified. Personally I find it a rather frigid beauty that appeals more to the intellect than to the heart. I listened to three different versions of the work: Tilson Thomas with the London SO, Boulez with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie (part of their 3CD Jubiläums Edition) and the celebrated Haitink with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. All of them seemed to have an excellent measure of the score, with MTT infusing the music with a characteristically impressionistic sfumato (helped by an atmospheric recording from the Abbey Road Studios), and Boulez, predictably, betting everything on precision and transparency. Haitink is sitting somewhere in between. Despite the qualities of these recordings I have the feeling that there is more to this score.

The CD with the Boulez take on Jeux also includes a 1980 performance by the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie of Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole, this time conducted by Kyrill Kondrashin. I've known the Rhapsodie for a very long time (my dad bought a recording in the earliest days of the compact disc medium, Eduardo Mata with the Dallas SO on RCA) considering it as one of these superbly crafted but innocuous symphonic spectaculars. But this performance is of a totally different calibre than anything else I have heard of this piece. It sounds raucously contemporary (I thought it was a later piece than the Debussy Jeux but was surprised to see Ravel composed it in 1907-08 already) and conjures the kind of cataclysmic images that would flower in La Valse only fifteen years and a world war later. The recording, that was made of a live performance, is astonishingly detailed if only a little constricted in the very loudest tutti. Kondrashin and his young orchestra present the work as if every detail has been thought through, yet the music making has an athletic, feline quality that is totally appropriate. It's a spooky, monumental version of the piece that perfectly seems to capture the atmosphere of these heady days early in the previous century.

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: 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.

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.

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.

Granados, Turina, Guridi, Montsalvatge: Canciones Espanolas

It's been a long while since I have listened to vinyl, but as I am only messing a little bit around, without, for the time being, a fixed listening perimeter in mind, I picked up this attractively 1970s specimen from a 'KM-treated' box. It stayed in my mind after JD had played a few tracks when I picked up the LP after the cleaning treatment. (I also think Pristine's newsletter with a report on Andrew Rose's visit to the Albeniz museum has something to do with my Spanish leanings). After careful listening I can indeed confirm that it is a marvel of a recording. The good news is that I picked up for 1 euro from the bargain bin in a Brussels second hand vinyl shop ...

The repertoire was all but unknown to me. A series of Spanish songs from composers I mostly hadn't heard about. Granados, certainly, but Montsalvatge, Guridi, and even Turina didn't ring much of a bell. The first side starts with a collection of three older songs - from the 16th to 18th century - where the lute accompaniment has been transcribed for piano. Beautiful, noble songs, drenched in that characteristic Iberian idiom. Granados fills the remainder of this LP side with 6 tonadillas. This is serious music, almost Mahlerian in its mixture of folksiness and expressionistic anguish. Side two continues with three colourful, masterfully impressionistic Turina songs, of which the darkly shaded El Fantasma stands out. Then three lively songs by Basque composer Jesus Guridi (who was cosmopolitan enough to write Seis canciones castellanas). The lines are more clearly etched here compared to the Turina.

Let us pause for a minute and ask who Jesus Guridi was anyway? Wikipedia learns that he lived a long (1886-1961) and fairly prolific life and was known as 'the' Basque composer during his lifetime. Interestingly he spent two years in Brussels studying with Joseph Jongen. His output covers both instrumental and vocal music (notably famous zarzuela) and is well represented in the Naxos catalogue. There is a 1946 Sinfonia Pyrenaica which sounds superbly colourful and accomplished and is going straight on my list of 'to buy'! Now I'd like to find his Homenaje a Walt Disney for piano and orchestra (there's a recording on the Claves label, now deleted, that can be found used).

The recital ends with a delightful collection of 6 Canciones Negras by Xavier Montsalvatge. Here Antillian echoes abound. The Cancion de cuna para dormir a un negrito is a truly delightful lullaby and seems to be a fixture in Spanish female singers' repertoires. The final song Canto Negro is a funny and virtuoso finale to a superbly entertaining recital.

What pulls this collection to an altogether stratospheric level is the very special voice of Teresa Berganza. She was 40 when the recital was taped in 1975 and at the peak of her career. It was two years later that she sang the title role in the still famous Carmen taped by DGG under Abbado. Admittedly not everyone is equally enamoured by the rather patrician slant she gives to the role. But that she was a singer of impeccably cultured artistry is undeniable. Here, on this LP, it is difficult to imagine more accomplished renderings of these songs. They just sound perfect, the voice being in total command. It's a masterful blend between intellectualism, poetry and visceral passion. The singer is marvelously accompanied by Felix Lavilla, who happened to be her husband for 20 years and fathered Berganza's three children. However, they divorced just two years after this recording and it looks like this wasn't a happy marriage at all (Here is a 1985 interview where she confided that she was in her second marriage " – the first was to a pianist, and a marriage between two artists is very difficult.  It was Carmen that liberated me from being the slave of the pianist."). 

Finally, the attractive repertoire, the marvelous voice and the beautiful accompaniment are splendidly put into relief by a remarkable recording. The LP sounds absolutely great. The voice is presented with beguiling fluidity and 'naturel'. The piano sounds as it should: 'metal and wood'. There's staggering dynamics in these grooves. And all this with a fairly simple Goldring Eroica. Admittedly, the soundstage is fairly compact and the stylus is not able to dig out the lowest frequencies. But that suits this kind of music fairly well. Whilst I certainly look forward to the day that I can listen to this with a more sophisticated element this LP has given me already much pleasure.

To end just two more quotes from the Bruce Duffy interview:

I like giving recitals because there is more light.  There is eye-contact between the singer and every member of the audience, even in a huge house with maybe 3000 people.  I’ve been giving recitals, and I am aware that way in the back there is one man who is not paying attention, who is not interested in what I am singing, and I can make him listen.  I can look at him and work on him (or her) until he’s awake.  More often, though, it is a “him.”  And, of course, when it is a “him,” it is easier to get him back.  [laughter]

I think that the kind of performances that are being offered to audiences nowadays is worse than it used to be.  I had an extraordinary stroke of luck that my career happened at the time that it did.  I began my career on the stage working with great conductors like Abbado and Giulini and Solti, and great stage-directors like Ponnelle and Zeffirelli.  This was a period when all the singers worked to create the very best possible performance of that music and the greatest possible theatrical portrayal of the characters, and this was arrived at because the rehearsal periods were a lot longer than they are now.  In the old days there used to be 25 days worth of rehearsals before the show took place, and during that time we worked very hard.  There were 4 or 5 rehearsals with orchestra plus a pre-dress rehearsal and a dress rehearsal.  So, with that kind of preparation, the performances came off in a way that is probably no longer possible.  Now, in the places where I go, the rehearsals are a week or 10 days before the show opens, and there are many singers who don’t even like to give that much!  They’d like to come a couple of days before the show, sing their performance, pick up their check and go on to the next city where they do the same thing again.  Since this is becoming more and more wide-spread as a practice, I believe that the performances being given nowadays are not of a quality that they used to be.