Fack ju Goehte

For her Chopin debut on MDG (MDG9471818), Jin Ju was awarded the highest honors from the top authorities: the jury of the Grand Prix du Disque Frédéric Chopin. It is only every five years that these guardians of the Chopin legacy come together to distinguish a mere four extraordinary recordings. Now this Chinese pianist blessed with a special interpretive sense celebrates her induction into this illustrious circle with a continuation of recordings for MDG.

A devoted disciple of Falla, Ernesto Halffter (less avant-garde a composer than his older brother Rodolfo or his more famous nephew Cristobal) gave up so much of his time and energy to the colossal task of making sense of, and completing, his mentor’s Atlantida that his own output remained modest, consisting chiefly of a chamber opera, ballets, concertos for violin and for guitar, and a handful of other works. The first of his Esquisses symphoniques (written before he was 20), the exuberant “Chanson du lanternier”, is heavily indebted to early Stravinsky: more individual (though with Debussian overtones) and very impressive both for its orchestral writing and its eloquence, is the second, “Paysage mort”. But it was his sizeable Sinfonietta, completed shortly afterwards in 1925, which really attracted attention at home and abroad. There have been three or four previous recordings of it (including the very last recording – on Spanish Columbia – made by the conductor Ataulfo Argenta), but none are currently in the catalogue.