This is a live recording of the recital given by Josep Colom at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid on 10 October 2018. Designed to encourage an original way of listening to music, the programme consists of a linked se- quence of single movements or pieces taken from collections. Together these form an uninterrupted whole that reveals hidden analogies between Schubert and seven other composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms and Schoenberg. Josep Colom also revives a once common but now forgotten performing tradition: that of using improvisation to create transitions between fully composed works. His concise extempore interludes lead the listener smoothly from one composition to another, creating a kind of continuum of sound.
As if in a mirror, this recording juxtaposes the original piano versions of two of Ravel's masterpieces ('Le Tombeau de Couperin' and 'Alborada del gracioso') with their respective orchestrations. The 'Concerto in G Major' combines the two facets, both when the piano is integrated into the overall sound and when it plays its role as a soloist. The subtle playing of Javier Perianes and the refined sonorities of the Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Josep Pons, also remind us that Spain was the most significant source of inspiration in Ravel's output.
If you missed this on its original issue back in 1996, here’s your chance to acquire one of the better orchestral tango recordings of music by the inimitable Astor Piazzolla. What’s more, the reissue comes in a hardbound, 96-page “deluxe edition” CD-size book containing detailed information on the music, Piazzolla, and the tango, comments by conductor Josep Pons, and pages of artsy, sexy, sepia-toned photographs of various tango-dancing couples…
Probably the most important Catalan Classical piano work, Frederic Mompou’s Música callada, performed by the most eminent Catalan pianist of our time, Josep Colom.
Clarinetist Ona Cardona and pianist Josep Colom join forces on this recording, performing Brahms’ late masterpieces, the clarinet sonatas op. 120. Superb performances of both sonatas that framed Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, op. 73 and a wonderful arrangement for clarinet and piano of Clara Schumann’s largely neglected Romanzen, op. 22.
Partly composed on cantus firmus derived from plainchant, the Missa Rex Virginum is one of two that have survived from the pen of Juan de Anchieta, composer to the Catholic Monarchs, and is a typcial representative of the new style that Josep Cabré likes to call 'late Gothic', already at the dawn of the Renaissance. Anchieta, an emblematic yet still little-known figure of Basque music, had considerable influence in his own time thanks to his close relationship with the Castilian crown.