A delightful programme
of dance-inspired chamber music from Spain and Latin America;
perhaps none of the music is especially profound, but it is
all melodically and rhythmically infectious, sophisticated music
which gets top-class performances from the Trío Arbós, one of
Spain’s finest chamber ensembles.
In his Sones
y Danzones – which gives the CD its title – the Cuban Leo
Brouwer plays some inventive games with Cuban musical traditions,
cross-referencing the habanera and the zapateado with allusions
to /quotations from Stravinsky and Shostakovich. The results
are playful but also rather beautiful; they demand attention
and surprise the listener more than once. The Trío Arbós play
the pieces with evident affection and understanding.
The Argentinian
composer Luis Gianneo is represented by his two ‘Danzas Argentinas’
and his second Piano Trio. Gianneo was born in Buenos Aires
of Italian stock. Active as a player, composer, teacher and
administrator, working for many years in the northern Argentinian
city of San Miguel de Tucumán, his musical enthusiasms included
Debussy, Respighi and Stravinsky. In the two pieces we hear
on this present CD such European influences, while they may
be apparent, largely take second place to the reworking of popular
dance forms and rhythms native (insofar as any such patterns
are ever ‘native’ in the sense of belonging exclusively to a
single country) of Argentina. The two dances which begin the
programme are quite enchanting, the first, ‘Güeya’, full of
lilting rhythms and graceful melodic turns, the second a witty
bailecito full of changes of tempo and which, for all its elegance,
also remembers the form’s Creole origins. The three movements
of Gianneo’s Second Piano Trio (the first is apparently lost)
carry classical descriptors (andante-lento-allegro energico)
but the music owes as much to Latin dance rhythms – notably
those of the tango, the pericon and the habanera – as it does
to classical models. The whole is a rather impressive piece
and it would be interesting to hear more of Gianneo’s work –
there is very little in the catalogue at present.
A rather more fashionable
Argentinian composer – Astor Piazzolla – is also represented
by two pieces, ‘Oblivion’ and ‘La Muerte del Ángel’, both arranged
for piano trio by the cellist José Bragato. The soulful melody
of ‘Oblivion’ works particularly well in this arrangement and
that of ‘La Muerte del Ángel’ makes for music of considerable
passion, shaped expressively by Trío Arbós. Perhaps it is the
context of a programme full of inter-continental connections
that makes these arrangements prompt more awareness that Piazzolla
studied with Nadia Boulanger than one usually carries away from
listening to his music.
The homeland of
the Trío Arbós is represented by two composers – Albeniz and
the figure who gave the Trio its name, Enrique Fernandez Arbós.
Arbós’s ‘Habanera’ comes from the composer’s ‘Trois pieces originales
dans le genre Espagnol’, which, according to the booklet notes
by Juan Carlos Garvayo, was a suite which was played by the
touring trio (in the 1890s) made up of Arbós, a great violinist,
Albéniz at the piano and David Popper playing cello! It is a
moody piece, full of rich harmonies and of opportunities for
expressive effects – opportunities which Trío Arbós accept,
without abusing them. This is very much salon music of its period
– but it is a fine example of its kind.
Originally written
for piano, Albéniz’s ‘Tango’ is here played in a trio arrangement
by Karl Rissland, published in Boston in 1918 – presumably the
same man as the viola player on some Mischa Elman recordings
of approximately that date? Though called ‘Tango’ it is actually
another habanera, another salon piece of real charm, rather
more economical in its effects than that by Arbós.
So, no great profundity
here, though in the music of Gianneo and Brouwer, in particular,
there is work of some genuine substance. But nothing is without
its charms, nothing is devoid of a real terpsichorean spirit,
as played by the excellent Trío Arbós, whose utterly persuasive,
even seductive, performances benefit from a warm, but clear, recorded
sound.
Glyn Pursglove
Trío Arbós: Juan Carlos Garvayo (piano), Miguel Borrego (violin),
José Miguel Gómez (cello)
