Manuel de FALLA (1876-1946)
Cuatro piezas españolas (1909) [20:33]
La vida breve, Danza No. 2 (1905, rev. 1913) [4:30]
El sombrero de très picos, two selections (1919) [7:21]
El amor brujo, Danza del terror (1916) [2:21]
Fantasia bética (1919) [11:56]
El amor brujo, Danza ritual del fuego (1916) [ 4:15]
Noches en los jardines de España (1916) [25:14]
Alicia de Larrocha (piano)
Orquestra de Conciertos de Madrid/Jesús Arámbarri
rec. 1958/59
ALTO ALC1437 [73:40]
Alicia de Larrocha (1923-2009) appears in grand form in this all-Falla program, a series of pieces that embody the composer’s Spanish roots in folk music, fandango and flamenco rhythms, cultivated and refined by his studies in Paris. The recordings were originally released in 1958 and 1959 by Hispavox, and have been remastered for this reissue.
The opening Cuatro piezas españolas, begun in Madrid and completed in Paris for Ricardo Viñes, exemplify a cool, vibrant approach to national salon music. Aragonesa’s graceful canters easily nod to the influence of Albeniz. Cubana swirls and sachets in lulling, color elements and inflected chords. Montañesa serves as a delicate, country idyll, though its energies soon explode beyond a mere “paysage”. Andaluza embodies, in brilliant arabesques and rhythmic impulses, the regional energy that often projects a passionate, Gypsy fervor.
De Larrocha proceeds with the second dance from La vida breve, Falla’s 1905 opera. Less popular than the other dance made immortal by Fritz Kreisler’s violin transcription, this muscular, virtuoso vehicle piece for a wedding scene revels in quick changes of key and meter, often asking for quick staccatos and syncopations. The strumming of guitars seems close, and the pounding soon assumes a mesmeric, volatile sensuality.
From the 1919 ballet The Three-Cornered Hat, we have two piano transcriptions. The Danza de los vecinos (Dance of the Neighbors) is a graceful piece first revealed to this listener in its orchestral guise by Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic; the Danza de la molinera (Dance of the Miller), a flamenco-style series of pulsating gestures, casts a gypsy seductiveness throughout its lush washes of sound and rippled scales.
The Danza del terror – from the Gypsy pseudo-operatic-balletic El amor brujo conceived for flamenco dancer Pastora Imperio – requires virtuoso trills and a fluid treble over a throbbing bass line.
The extensive Fantasia bética appears between the Dance of Terror and the long-familiar Ritual Fire Dance. Film aficionados may recall that Oscar Levant and José Iturbi loved to show off in this volatile piece, as did Artur Rubinstein in his encores. The 1919 Fantasia was written for Rubinstein, who eventually abandoned the work due, purportedly, to its length. The term bética derives from the old Roman name for Andalusia. The demanding alternations between the hands of heavily punctuated chords borrow from guitar figuration, often with rapid stretti. In its more sedate episodes, the Fantasia assumes a nocturnal sensibility, but only momentarily, for the declamatory and percussive effects ensue. De Larrocha’s panache and showmanship clearly mark her as bravura player who never abandons her sense of national poetry. This piece proved to be the last of Falla’s intentional virtuoso works, and its stunning conclusion may nod to Debussy of the potent L’isle joyeuse.
Falla considered his 1916 Nights in the Gardens of Spain to be “symphonic impressions”. This three-movement tone poem with piano obbligato may owe some debt to Vincent d’Indy’s Symphony on a French Mountain Air. On the other hand, if we consider the three movements as connected nocturnes, then Debussy becomes their model. The first movement evokes the Generalife Gardens of the Alhambra in Grenada, and its atmosphere wafts with Moorish sensibilities. The interplay between the pianist and conductor Jesús Arámbarri’s Madrid ensemble is well balanced, sensitive and occasionally thrilling.
The opening of the second movement, Distant Dance, with its unidentified garden, enjoys an erotic intensity (one is reminded of the 1958 account on RCA by Artur Rubinstein and Enrique Jorda conducting the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, or the 1957 version on Columbia by Robert Casadesus and Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York under Dimitri Mitropoulos). The Dance becomes mesmeric and lulling, and serves to move us suddenly to the passions of the Gardens of the Sierra de Cordoba in northern Andalusia. This last movement contains a series of startling effects, beginning with brilliant guitar figuration and then erupting into a virtual storm of emotions, first stated in stunning parlando-recitative in the keyboard. The orchestral part sizzles beneath and then towers in strings, brass and timpani. That this music can roar to majestic heights becomes quite obvious, as does its capacity for sensuous life. Over a timpani pedal, it moves hazily in a recap of the parlando motif, now resonant in scales but subdued in the orchestral tissue. The luxuriant romance of the work sings mightily once more, only to dissolve in the Spanish aether, elegant and rarified by Falla’s expressive harmony.
Gary Lemco
