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For their third recording for label Stradivarius, the duo Singer & Fischer have chosen to devote themselves to four Hispanic-flavored works. With little original repertoire despite the opuses that various composers have written for them in recent years, transcriptions, arrangements, and other adaptations are usual in the ensemble’s work. However, not all works are easy to adapt, and the choice of pieces from among the ‘possibilities’ is often a difficult one. The transcriptions on this recording are the result of a process of reflection that goes back to the duo’s genesis. Their first attempts at De Falla or Granados took place in the 90s, a time when the youthfulness of the performers certainly contributed to the enthusiasm essential to any musical interpretation, but when a lack of experience was a brake on any idea of immortalizing their concert attempts.
Since then, the Singer & Fischer duo have taken the time to mature, and this latest recording is the result of over thirty years of playing together. Whether in terms of sound timbre, phrasing or balance, the ensemble has achieved a musical union made possible by its longevity, proof that despite all the acceleration and frenzy in today’s world, some goals take time.
Born in 1860, Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz was mainly a pianist and wrote primarily for the piano. More than any other musician, he succeeded in incorporating the Spanish guitar idiom and folklore into his style. Thus it is no wonder that many of Albéniz’s piano works have also been performed on the guitar. But things are different when we come to Albéniz’s Iberia, a suite of piano pieces so complex that few solo guitarists have ever attempted to transcribe and perform them. My selection stems from Albéniz’s most well-known cycles: Iberia, Suite Española and España.
CD · 40 discs
His exceptional touch and sense of phrasing, his deep and personal understanding of the most varied repertoires, or even the legendary trio he formed together with Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals, made Alfred Cortot the greatest pianist of his time. Master of many disciples, notably the brilliant Dinu Lipatti, Samson François and Clara Haskil, Cortot also had a lasting influence on the Russian piano school through Samuil Feinberg and Heinrich Neuhaus, the latter himself being the revered teacher of Sviatoslav Richter.
All of the recordings in this set had undergone careful sound restoration in 2012, in order to respect as closely as possible the original sound. The remastering was carried out under the expert control of Mr. Guthrie Luke, a former disciple of Alfred Cortot who attended many recording sessions by Cortot. These recordings do not represent a "complete" edition: the many rolls engraved by the artist for Duo-Art, Aeolian and Pleyela labels have not been reproduced here, most of them doubling the 78-RPM repertoire. The first recordings are acoustic; and the ones with an electric microphone appeared as early as 1926.
This latest entry in Naxos' Spanish Classics series is also the ninth and final volume in the Albéniz piano music series. The focus here is on Albéniz’s compositional evolution and his use of inspired folk-based melodies, Hispanic nostalgia and vivid dance rhythms, encapsulated by the intoxicating Chants d’Espagne. The album also includes five works heard in exciting new arrangements for two pianos made expressly for this recording. Miguel Ángel R. Laiz is joined by Santiago L. Sacristán in the works for two pianos.
Before a phrase from the Gran vals by Francisco Tárrega unexpectedly shot to international fame as the Nokia ringtone, his most celebrated pieces included the Capricho árabe, composed in 1892. The piece is inspired by the mixture of Muslim Castilian and Christian cultures which had always been a feature of the Valencia region where Tárrega grew up.
Tárrega’s friend and near-contemporary Isaac Albéniz was a virtuoso pianist who also played the guitar. Even though he evoked the guitar brilliantly on the piano, he never composed any music for the instrument. ‘Malagueña’ was first published in the collection España. Published in 1892 as ‘Prélude’, the piece widely known as ‘Asturias’ is also imbued with the spirit of southern Spain.
Federico Mompou’s Suite compostelana was commissioned by Andrés Segovia and was published in 1964, the same year as Segovia’s first recording of the piece.
The Italian guitarist and composer Carlo Domeniconi has drawn on several national traditions for his works, but has a particular interest in Turkish music which he has studied in depth. The Variationen über ein anatolisches Volkslied (Variations on an Anatolian Folksong) were composed in 1982 and are based on the song (türkü) ‘Uzun ince bir yoldayim’. Koyunbaba is a four-movement suite for guitar which started as an improvisation, and was then notated soon afterwards. The composer describes the score as ‘no more than a sketch’ and insists that players improvise in their performance – which Krzysztof Meisinger does to great effect with his additional ‘Invocazione’ at the start of the work.
REVIEW:
It’s a pity Mompou didn’t write more for the guitar. His only work for that instrument, the Suite compostelana, is a minor masterpiece, profound in its simplicity. It takes a player of Meisinger’s stature to pull off a successful performance, and here the Preludio, Cuna and Canción are especially well rendered.
-- Gramophone
The Spanish pieces on this CD became famous mainly as solo guitar compositions by the three Catalan master pianists Isaac Albéniz, Joaquín Malats and Enrique Granados. I have often played them that way in concerts as well. In 2019, Nicolas and I had the idea to transcribe these works combined with works by Astor Piazzolla for viola and guitar. Since then, we have enjoyed playing this music in numerous concerts. The viola-guitar combination gives these compositions a whole new dimension. Compared to the solo guitar versions, the works appear in a completely new light, allowing the compositions to emit transparency and a variety of tonal colors.
The Spanish music of the CD program alternates with music by one of the most frequently performed works of Manuel de Falla (1876–1946), and the Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992). Piazzolla is considered the great innovator of the Tango, the “Tango Nuevo”. He originally composed the “Histoire du Tango” for flute and guitar. The other compositions are short character pieces, all of which we have arranged for viola and guitar. The two movements “Bordel-1900” and “Café-1930” evoke the history of Tango in their respective eras. “Bordel-1900” goes back to the beginnings of the Tango. The new dance form was played in the brothels of Buenos Aires around this time. As “1930” marked a new era, the Tango was no longer danced as it was around 1900, and people limited themselves to listening to it. The Tango becomes more musical and romantic, the movements become slower, new harmonies are added. The music takes on a strong melancholic streak.
CD · 16 discs
This collection stands as a valuable time capsule from which one comes away with a fuller understanding of Iturbi’s prominence in American wartime and postwar culture.
The complete RCA Victor Recordings by José Iturbi from 1933 to 1953, include his piano duo recordings with sister Amparo Iturbi as well as Amparo Iturbi’s solo recordings on 16 CDs, restored and remastered from the original lacquer discs and analogue tapes using high-resolution 24 bit/192 kHz mastering technology with about 95% of the recordings appearing on CD for the first time and 23 pieces previously unreleased. As well as a new, captivating essay by Grammy-nominated singer, pianist, and music anthropologist Michael Feinstein on the life and work of José Iturbi and a photo book with previously unseen photos and facsimiles from the Iturbi Archives in Hollywood.
There was a time when classical music was a natural part of Hollywood. From the moments with Jascha Heifetz in They Shall Have Music (1939) to the unrivaled performances of Oscar Levant and Isaac Stern in Humoresque (1946). In its Golden Era, Hollywood adorned itself with the Who's Who of classical music. Today, alongside icons such as Marylin Monroe and James Dean, the names of Leonard Bernstein, Maria Callas and Arturo Toscanini, as well as Rudolf Serkin, Joseph Szigeti, or José Iturbi were immortalized on the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame. This edition is a loving homage to Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, made possible through the generous support of the José Iturbi Foundation and the Hollywood Museum Board of Directors, who contributed to the lavish restoration of many previously lost unpublished recordings. The publication was also made possible by contributions of singer, pianist, and music archivist Michael Feinstein, the Ambassador for the Great American Songbook.
During the 1940s and 1950s the “World’s Most Popular Classical Pianist” mantle fell comfortably upon José Iturbi (1895-1980). His recognition as a radio personality led to a movie career that yielded ten feature films between 1943 and 1951 where the pianist mostly starred as himself. Yet for all of Iturbi’s renown, he was hardly a poseur. He worked with Wanda Landowska in Paris, and gave Stravinsky’s Piano Rag Music its world premiere, as well as the first complete Carnegie Hall performance of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes.
He also conducted. When Eugene Ormandy assumed the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music directorship in 1936, his chief rival for the position was Iturbi, who wound up taking charge of the Rochester Philharmonic that same year. Once Hollywood beckoned, however, Iturbi became the brunt of intellectual critics, who basically wrote him off as a sell-out and an artistic lightweight.
Time, of course, brings perspective, and Sony/BMG’s lavishly produced 16-CD collection containing Iturbi’s complete RCA Victor recordings invites a fairly thorough examination of the musician behind the personality, plus an opportunity to reassess a largely forgotten body of recorded work. A 188-page coffee table book contains photos in abundance, with all original-jacket artwork represented, including the most politically incorrect cover art ever to grace Dvorák’s “New World” symphony. We get complete session and release discographies, an Iturbi filmography, plus a brilliant in-depth biographical essay by Michael Feinstein, who co-produced this collection with Robert Russ.
It’s a pity that the session discography is not cross-referenced to corresponding CD tracks, not to mention the absence of a discography by composer. This makes it difficult to navigate the contents with ease, especially in works that Iturbi recorded more than once. For example, it took some sleuthing on my part to discover that Discs 5 and 11 each contained the Liszt Liebestraum No. 3, Schumann Arabeske, Debussy Reverie, and Chopin Polonaise in A-flat Op. 53, and that the performances were not identical.
With few notable exceptions, Iturbi’s solo recordings mostly consist of short, encore-length pieces. He’s especially at home in Spanish music: Iturbi’s accentuation, phrasing, and timing throughout Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance define perfection, while he shapes Granados’ Spanish Dance No. 2 (“Oriental’) with sensitivity and tenderness. Classical selections also stand out for Iturbi’s bracing articulation. True, the outer movements of his Mozart K. 331 and 332 sonata recordings are overly facile and insufficiently inflected when measured alongside contemporaneous Mozartean rivals like Schnabel, Gieseking, Fischer, and Haskil. Yet the sheer evenness and poised symmetry of Iturbi’s finger-work easily explains why pianists like Julius Katchen and William Kapell praised his Mozart.
Iturbi also revels in the Haydn C major Theme and Variations’ sly wit. By contrast, introspection and sobriety characterize Iturbi’s measured unfolding of Beethoven’s Andante favori. Similar gravitas elevates Paderewski’s Minuet in G to near-masterpiece status. Iturbi’s virtuosic glitter befits his dashing Saint-Saëns Allegro appassionato more than in his glib Liszt Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este.
Iturbi’s Chopin hits and misses. His Mazurkas lack the ardency and rhythmic snap that distinguishes a Second Scherzo that gets better as it progresses. Also note the pianist’s dotting the duple rhythms in the A-flat Polonaise’s main theme that Horowitz, Rubinstein, and Lhevinne play straight on their rival RCA versions.
The later recordings reveal Iturbi’s pianism losing some of its erstwhile luster and subtlety, possibly exaggerated by the close microphone placement and twangy patina typical of late 1940s/early 1950s piano recordings stemming from RCA’s Hollywood recording studio. For example, the two Debussy Arabesques recorded in New York in 1939 have a supple elegance missing in their glassy-sounding 1950 Hollywood counterparts (sound clips). The blustery, hard-toned, and harshly engineered Liszt Concerto No. 1, Mendelssohn Concerto No. 1, and Beethoven Concerto No. 3 were non-starters in their day, with the piano way up in the mix, relegating the crackerjack RCA Symphony musicians to doormat status. Still, the Mendelssohn’s outer movements feature some of Iturbi’s most scintillating pianism on disc.
While Iturbi’s two-piano distribution of the solo part of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is surprisingly effective and discreet, he and his pianist sister Amparo turn in a crass, alternately whipped up, and sappily sentimentalized interpretation. Works of Mozart, Debussy, and Milhaud better represent their dazzling ensemble rapport, but again, the boxy, claustrophobic engineering undermines their efforts. Similar dryness typifies Amparo’s idiomatic solo recordings of Spanish repertoire. Still, it’s nice to have her rare 1954 Granados Goyescas back in circulation, although it pales alongside Alicia de Larrocha’s far more nuanced and texturally differentiated interpretation from the following year.
The collection also showcases Iturbi’s work on the podium. His 1940 Rochester Philharmonic versions of the Mozart D minor and Beethoven C minor concertos are more judiciously balanced than his orchestrally superior 1952 RCA Victor Symphony remakes. Each contains lively and engaging outer movements that flank wooden, hard-toned slow movements.
Iturbi’s 1951 Liszt Hungarian Fantasy with the Valencia Symphony Orchestra has a snarling rawness that differs from the sheen and suavity of the 1952 Arrau/Ormandy and late 1940s Solomon and Moiseiwitsch editions. As with many second-tier American orchestras in the 1940s, the Rochester Philharmonic boasted strong strings but less proficient winds and brass. Consequently, Iturbi’s Mendelssohn “Scottish” Symphony took a back seat to Mitropoulos’ powerful 1941 Minneapolis version, while the aforementioned Dvorák New World lacked the Szell/Czech Philharmonic recording’s flavorful ensemble discipline.
The prize of Iturbi’s Rochester discography is a snazzy and brilliantly turned-out Morton Gould “Latin American” Symphonette, which is surprisingly well-engineered for its 1944 vintage. Another delightful curiosity is William J. Reddick’s Espanharlem, a brief orchestral work whose quick changing moods and jazzy underpinnings wouldn’t be out of place in a Carl Stalling Bugs Bunny cartoon soundtrack. There’s also a previously unpublished recording conducted by Werner Janssen of Iturbi’s orchestral composition Soliloquy. The piece amounts to 14 and a half minutes’ worth of rambling 1940s film music clichés filtered through third-rate Lecuona. Why Iturbi is credited as piano soloist when there’s no piano to be heard is anyone’s guess!
Notwithstanding the artistic unevenness of Iturbi’s recorded output he always had the self-respect to keep his technique in world-class repair, unlike his rival classical pianist turned media personality Oscar Levant. Still, music lovers who don’t want to go the whole hog, so to speak, are directed to APR’s 2016 three-disc solo Iturbi compilation. I also hope to see Iturbi’s post-cinema EMI recordings restored. However, beyond purely musical considerations, Sony/BMG’s collection stands as a valuable time capsule from which one comes away with a fuller understanding of Iturbi’s prominence in American wartime and postwar culture.
-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)
CONTENTS:
The first volume of Sebastian Stanley’s Albéniz survey was greeted with enthusiasm for the repertoire and praise for the interpretations in the pages of Fanfare and elsewhere: ‘He is tender and sentimental in the lyrical moments, animated and energetic in his attack elsewhere. He clearly loves the music, and dispatches it with unapologetic flair.’ His sequel opens with the First Suite Española which contains several of the composer’s most colourful and best-known pieces. It begins with the vibrant guitar-strumming textures and Moorish harmonies of ‘Granada (Serenata)’ and continues with his own interpretation of a dance from his native Catalonia. Evocations of Seville, Cadiz and Asturias all spring from the pages with the sharp colours of a Goya canvas, and the suite comes to an exotic, sensuous conclusion with a Cuban habanera. The Second Suite Española is much smaller and less well-known. Its two movements are evocations of Zaragoza and (once more) Seville. Sebastian Stanley includes two further landscapes in sound: the Zambra granadina (Danse orientale) evokes flamenco dance that features a haunting melody to a seductively syncopated accompaniment. The rolled chords of Cádiz (Gaditana) suggest the strumming of guitars, setting the scene for an animated copla dance. The neoclassical side of Albéniz comes to the fore with the third of his Suites Anciennes – consisting of a graceful Minuet and sprightly Gavotte – which anticipate similar projects to revive Baroque forms in modern guise by Ravel and Respighi. As a reminder of the incomparable richness of the finest Spanish piano music,’ Sebastian Stanley’s Albéniz series should invite the attention of curious listeners and pianophiles alike.
“Ascenso is a collection of works that have, in one way or another, a direct connection to myself. I wanted to present an album that was a representation of my current self, not just as a cellist, but as an artist. My idea is that this is not a cellist’s recording, or an album centered around the instrument, but rather a work that is meant to be experienced as you would a painting on a wall, whatever that may mean to you.”
Santiago Cañón-Valencia has been praised as one of the most promising young cellists of his generation. Born in Bogota in 1995, his major musical mentors have been Henryk Zarzycki in Colombia, James Tennant in New Zealand, Andres Diaz in the United States and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt at the Kronberg Academy in Germany.
– A 2022 BBC Next Generation Artist and Winner of the Silver Medal and “Audience Favorite”
– A major prize winner of the Sphinx, Casals, Johansen, Cassadó, and Adam cello competitions.
What the charismatic virtuoso delivers is some attractive premieres. Ponce de León’s "La ruta de la mariposa" has a poignant transparency, and is exquisitely performed.
-- BBC Music Magazine
This is a remastered recording of the concert given by cantaora Rocío Márquez and pianist Rosa Torres-Pardo at the Fundación Juan March on November 28, 2014. It presents a selection of Spanish classical works interspersed with music from the folk tradition that inspired their composition. The flamenco singer–classical pianist duo interweaves works by Manuel de Falla, Enrique Granados and Isaac Albéniz with popular Spanish songs (some of which were later harmonized by Federico García Lorca). The artists’ flamenco take on classical repertoire reveals the often neglected traditional origins of works whose composers drew on popular culture as they searched for the essence of Spanish music.
From the late Romanticism of the music from Pearl Harbor to the delicacy and refinement of The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Anna Scheps brings the full resources of the piano to bear on some of the most beautiful and rousing film scores of the last half century. Her arrangements for piano exude eloquent virtuosity and Lisztian rhapsodic lyricism as well as razor-sharp dynamism in the case of Mission: Impossible. She also includes the evocative sound world of Isaac Albéniz and the sparkling elegance of Scarlatti sonatas to create an album of ambitious bravura and poetry.
There’s no doubting the virtuosic talent on display here and some of the arrangements are rather insightful, taking familiar cinematic ditties to new musical heights.
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