With other composers
you might confuse your Sonatas españolas but not with
Turina. Though two actually bear that name he withdrew the first
very sharply indeed and after the initial performance it remained
unperformed until 1981. Which left for all practical purposes
just the Second to bear that name, written a quarter of a century
later than that apprentice work.
Turina’s violin works
are drenched in Andalusian sunshine. They are to Iberian dance
rhythms what Seville is to the orange. The First Sonata is explicitly
bathed in that rich landscape, emerging in the wake of Granados
and Albéniz and buoyed by just a dash of Franco-Iberian impressionism.
Its language is enriched by folk lyricism and in strictly rhapsodic
flights of fancy. The slow movement is a songful and passionate
one, verdant and rich hued, whilst the finale is skittish and
energetic but with some French models – yes, the obvious ones,
very much on show. It’s presumably this that caused Turina to
disown his offspring. Elements of Debussyan practice perhaps loomed
too large for him and he felt it insufficiently personal a work.
In 1923 he wrote
his first numbered and acknowledged sonata. It too is in three
movements. It’s a tougher bird and there are some moments that
sound uncannily like the 1917 John Ireland Second Sonata though
its vaguely Delian references are probably diluted impressionism
and incidental. The second subject is sweetly lyrical but has
a touch of the salon style about it as well. A fine aria lies
at the heart of the central movement, as do some rather rhetorical
late nineteenth century violinistics – via Sarasate maybe. The
finale picks up on Sevillian vigour – with puckish guitar “thwack”
imitations and dancing rhythmic animation.
A decade later he
wrote his final sonata, the one by which he is best known –
if he’s known at all for them. Again this cleaves in part to
the Iberian impressionist model so proudly absorbed earlier
in his compositional life. As before various dance patterns
course through the veins of this energising opus – though one
becomes aware that these are less fanciful than of old, and
more sophisticated in their melodic and rhythmic profile and
patterns. For example though Turina employs the Fandango with
great skill he fuses it with alternating relaxed material that
ensures a cohesion sometimes lacking in the earlier works.
The Variaciones
clásicas were written just before the Second Sonata. They
employ a panoply of dance rhythms, the seguidillas prominently,
and end in a zapateado of foot-tapping zest; moods range
from melancholy to driving. Homenaje a Navarra was written
four years before Turina’s death. It’s a salute to a hero of
the Spanish violin firmament, Sarasate, and takes his themes
and does to them pretty much as Sarasate did with his operatic
paraphrases and own compositions. It’s full of vitality and
affirmative enjoyment.
The performances are
pleasing and engaging; a little small-scaled perhaps in tonal
shading but conversely never making a meal out of Turina’s already
heady rhythmic profile. Competition, unheard by me, comes from
the distinguished team of Ayo and Canino on Dynamic; they perform
all the violin-piano music on two discs. But the Verso team makes
a fine case for this vital and energising music.
Jonathan Woolf
David Peralta
Alegre (violin) 
