Naxos
has been devoted to the music of Balada and shows no signs
of reneging on its commitment. Two of the works on their
latest disc were written in 2003 and the other two span the
decades; Divertimentos was completed in 1991 and Quasi
un Pasodoble in 1981. These are all premiere recordings.
My
impressions of Balada so far have not been unmixed but he’s
a composer difficult to ignore. The three movement Symphony
No.5 American features the vestigial use of some extreme
avant-garde effects with more “ethnic” material, to use Balada’s
own word. It was written In Memoriam 9/11 and moves
from the darkness of the first movement to the communing
light of the second. Brittle, urgent with pulsing brass and
bell motifs lacing the music this first movement bears some
similarity with Balada’s Guernica, which I’ve also
reviewed here. The blitz and bombardment are intense and
unremitting. The second movement is, by contrast, reflective
and uses marimba-like sonorities and an infiltrated Negro
Spiritual to induce a sense of calm – though those darker
sounds are still there, only subsumed. Balada likes Spirituals
and one of most recent works created a kind of - unsuccessful
in my view - tapestry of them. The finale is a chugging square-dance
with plenty of enthusiastic percussion work and a degree
of exuberance.
The Prague
Sinfonietta was commissioned by the Torroella International
Music Festival in Catalonia. Learning that a Prague orchestra
(the Czech Sinfonietta) would give the premiere Balada
decided on a Mozart-meets-Sardana theme. Using some themes
from Mozart’s Prague Symphony Balada also builds
into his orchestral piece some of the sardanas composed
by a local musician, Vincenç Bou. It’s an especially colourful
work, strong naturally on rhythmic zest and powered by
some spiky and pleasurable wind textures.
The
1991 Divertimentos – there are three – each utilise
a “sonic characteristic” in the composer’s phrase: that’s
to say, pizzicato, harmonics and normal bowing. These exercises
in texture and colour make for enjoyable though rather superficial
pleasure. The first has a real sense of direction, galvanised
by the pizzicati, whilst the second’s harmonics put me in
mind of some ghostly, Herzog-inspired Blue Danube. The third
takes elements of the other two and is tensile to a fine
degree. Finally the bucolic dancery and quasi-impressionistic
shimmer that is Quasi un Pasodoble. This is a most
diverting piece in which shimmer and silence take their place
alongside the bump and grind of the Pasodoble and produce
some folkloric panache.
The
performances are teeming with commitment and energy and the
production values are high. Those put off by Balada’s 1960s
aleatorics and the like can rest assured that he is much
more approachable here, indeed positively engagingly. Some
elements of his avant-gardism still sit in the Symphony but
constructively so. Rewarding.
Jonathan
Woolf
Seville Royal
Symphony Orchestra/Eduardo Alonso-Crespo 
