Thomas
Rajna completed his cycle of Granados’s solo piano music
within a year – 1976. As if to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary
of their original appearance on CRD LPs Brilliant Classics
has returned the cycle to the market-place. It’s in one slim
box containing six nicely filled CDs and with extensive notes
from Bryce Morrison.
Nothing
could be finer. Rajna was an expert advocate for Granados’s
music and though recordings since have come – and gone – his
have maintained an honoured place in the memory; and now,
thankfully, in the disc drawer. And this is all the more
so as so few are performed in public with any great conviction,
beyond the obvious Goyescas and maybe Escenas Poeticas and Escenas
Romanticas.
The
first disc furnishes Goyescas and his performance
of the great cycle is full of poetry and a certain aristocratic
finesse. Rajna is a colourist of great deftness, preferring
pastel to primary maybe, but pursuing his conception with
absolute fidelity and no inner contradictions. It renders
his traversal rather slower than is perhaps the norm; two
examples will have to suffice. Coloquio en la reja is
in his hands an intense, almost sepulchral affair – very
slow and measured. And Los requiebros may well come
as a surprise to those weaned on de Larrocha’s various traversals,
not least the one she left the year after Rajna’s own – for
Decca in 1977. It’s certainly not simply a question of tempo,
of course. He tends to be less rhythmically incisive and
vital than de Larrocha here, his rubati are considerably
less teasing, those detonating left hand accents less pronounced.
In short his is a more agreeably equable view, a more sedate
one. To those who find de Larrocha occasionally overstated
in this repertoire Rajna may offer a point of comparison,
though I certainly wouldn’t forego her magnetic rhythmic
incision and stylish personality.
The Twelve
Spanish Dances are far less played than was formerly
the case. No.5, Andaluza, has survived – and has
been famously transcribed – but they all offer valuable
things for the inquisitive performer and many a concert
could be enlivened by the judicious inclusion of a brace
of them. Here Rajna really comes into his own. His command
is sure, his dynamics powerfully expansive, his touch splendid,
and his tonal variety evocative. His surety in the second, Oriental,
lies in his control of the swaying rhythm of the outer
sections in the same way that he is so successful in Villanesca where
he evokes the bell motifs, commands the wide octave leaps,
and is sweetly pious in the lied that lies at its heart.
His impetuous accelerando in the Rondella Aragonesa is
judged splendidly – the correspondingly slow section equally
so. In the context of the whole cycle Andaluza doesn’t
sound so exceptional after all.
The
third disc offers a miscellany of pieces, some admittedly
not fro the top drawer. The Allegro de Concierto is
rather more notable for its moments of Chopinesque reverie
and Lisztian flourish than for any really personalised statement.
And the Rapsodia Aragonesa sounds like a supercharged
Liadov, which is not necessarily a criticism, though it does
certainly imply a limitation. Carezza-Vals is generic
but of more value by far is Oriental-Cancion, Variad,
Intermedio y Final. This is an intensely evocative work
and one that houses plenty of room for internal dramatic
contrast and Iberian tang. So too do the Valses Poeticos.
The second of the Waltzes encloses a beautiful melody, the
third is impish and in the final waltz we return with generous
cyclical warmth to the opening number. Rajna plays them with
distinction.
Granados’s
Op.1 is contained in a miscellaneous fourth volume and it
proves to be echt Schumann. A slightly later work, Bocetos,
unites two of his influences, Schumann and Chopin, though
the textures and rhythmic pulse are unambiguously Iberian.
Rajna reserves some real power for the culminatory chordal
glory that is A la Pradera and once more parades his
octaves in Danza caracteristica. Of more intimately
poetic import are the Escenas Poeticas, not least
the hymnal delicacy of the second, which he presents with
great warmth and candour. This is a quarter of an hour cycle
that, once again, should be far more often played than it
is.
It’s
a shame that the Escenas Romanicas are not separately
tracked – the six should be. That said Rajna shows no sign
of routine or flagging spirits in his poetic unfolding of
this big, twenty-six minute cycle. The spirit of Chopin as
so often hovers above some of the six but it’s not a suffocating
influence, rather it’s a liberating one; Rajna makes no attempt
to conceal the obvious, instead allowing the music to speak
for itself. This it does with real force and poetry. Harmonically
and colouristically this is among the greatest of Granados’s
piano music. The Molto appassionato, spare and concentrated,
is a particularly fine example of this but the whole cycle
is a mini masterpiece. The Seis piezas consist of
six, similarly untracked, dance pieces but they occupy a
more generic place in the scheme of nineteenth century virtuosity – they’re
certainly colourful but their merits are uneven. The three Libro
de Horas are different – the rolled chords and limpidly
tuneful first is impressive on its own but Rajna finds great
grandeur in the song of the second - made even more active
through acute left hand pointing. The third is solemn, religiose,
slow and has plenty of wide acres in which one can contemplate
its vistas.
The
Op.39 Impromptu reminds one yet again of a free-flowing
Schumannesque inheritance. It’s far preferable to the flummery
and tricksy late nineteenth century games of the Seis
Estudios expresivos. Much better and far more revealing
is the posthumously published Estudio, which bears
the unmistakeable imprint of Fauré. The three little Escenas
Poeticas are warm without being pointlessly rhapsodic
and Rajna brings out their evocative coloration and gentle
sense of regret extremely well. This final volume ties up
loose ends nicely even going so far as to overdub Rajna in
the two Marchas Militares.
This
is another bargain from Brilliant Classics. Performances,
documentation and recording quality are all impressive. There’s
no real reason to hesitate.
Jonathan Woolf
see
also review by William Hedley
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Complete Track Listing
CD1
Piano Works vol. 1
Goyescas
Los majos enamorados
Book I
1. Los requiebros [8:43]
2. Coloquio en la reja [13:42]
3. El fandango de Candil
[6:33]
4. Quejas o la Maja y el
Ruisenor [7:36]
Book II
5. El amor y la Muerte (Balada)
[15:42]
6. Epilogo (Serenata del
espectro) [8:04]
7. El Pelele [4:36]
CD2
Piano Works vol. 2
12 Spanish Dances Op.
37
1. No. 1 Galante [2:36]
2. No. 2 Oriental [2:32]
3. No. 3 Fandango [3:42]
4. No. 4 Villanesca [5:26]
5. No. 5 Andaluza (Playera)
[4:41]
6. No. 6 Rondella aragonesa
[2:42]
7. No. 7 Valenciana (Calasera)
[4:39]
8. No. 8 Sardana [3:48]
9. No. 9 Romantica [4:24]
10. No. 10 Melancolica [4:24]
11. No. 11 Arabesca [6:09]
12. No. 12 Bolero [5:08]
Total: 55:37
CD3
Piano Works vol. 3
1. Allegro de Concierto [8:45]
2. Valses Poeticos [14:47]
3. Capricho Español Op. 39
[5:25]
4. Rapsodia Aragonesa [6:50]
5. Carezza-Vals Op. 38 [6:52]
6. Oriental-Cancion Variada
Intermedio y Final [10:45]
7. Dos Impromptus: [6:00]
Total: 60:06
CD4
Piano Works vol. 4
1. Moresque y Arabe [6:40]
2. Cuentos de la juventud
Op. 1 [15:57]
3. Sardana [4:42]
4. Bocetos [12:54]
5. Mazurka Op. 2 [2:08]
6. Barcarola Op. 45 [3:10]
7. Los Soldados de Cartón
[1:35]
8. A la Pradera [3:05]
9. Danza caracteristica [5:30]
10. A la Cubana Op. 36 [4:15]
Escenas Poeticas
11. Recuerdo de Paises Lejanos
[3:51]
12. El Angel de los Claustros
[4:12]
13. Cancion de Margarita
[1:45]
14. Suenos del Poeta [6:47]
Total: 75:32
CD5
Piano Works vol. 5
1. Escenas Romanticas [26:23]
2. Seis piezas sobre cantos
populares Españoles [26:02]
Preludio-Anoranza-Ecos
de la Parranda-Vascongada
3. Danza lenta [2:31]
4. Aparación [2:42]
5. Cartas de amor valses
intimos Op. 44 [3:42]
Libro de Horas
6. En el jardin [2:00]
7. El invierno [4:54]
8. Al suplicio [4:03]
Total: 74:27
CD6
Piano Works vol. 6
1. Impromptu Op. 39 [5:20]
2. Seis Estudios expresivos
[14:09]
3. Marche militaire [3:15]
4. Estudio Op. Posth. [3:03]
5. Elisenda [5:58]
6. Paisaje Op. 35 [6:08]
7. Marchas Militares: No.
1 [2:57]
8. Marchas Militares: No.
2 [2:38]
Escenas Poeticas
9. Berceuse [4:56]
10. Eva y Walter [3:28]
11. Danza de la Rosa [1:37]
Total: 54:04
Thomas Rajna
(piano) 
