Danza de Los Bisontes

There is no shortage of recordings of Manuel de Falla's El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat) and El amor brujo (Love, the Wizard), with more on the way, thanks to the centenary of the former in 2019. Even casual listeners may reflect that this delightful work has never, despite plenty of changes in taste in music of the interwar period, fallen out of style. It was on the cutting edge when it was premiered, and yet its fusion of flamenco influences with growing French neoclassicism is irresistible for general symphonic audiences.

The two splendid works on this album resulted from Manuel de Falla's encounter with the husband-and-wife team of dramatists Martínez Sierra-Lejárraga: Love the Magician, whose eminently ‘gypsy’ inspiration takes us to the very heart of the flamenco repertory, here magnificently embodied under the direction of maestro Pablo Heras-Casado; and the brilliant pantomime The Three-cornered Hat, for which Picasso designed the sets and costumes – exactly 100 years ago!

The works for stage and concert hall by Manuel de Falla starts off our new Spanish series with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Juanjo Mena.

The reissue game continues. All of this material has been available more or less continuously in recent years, with the exception of Frühbeck's Three-Cornered Hat, which only resurfaced quite recently on an EMI twofer accompanied by Atlántida. The reason it reappears here, evidently, stems from the fact that this two-disc set contains all of Victoria de Los Angeles' stereo Falla recordings; and despite the fact that she sings for about 60 seconds in total in "Hat", it's always a pleasure to hear Frühbeck's big-hearted, expansively Romantic but always exciting way with the music.

M. De Falla's work is strongly influenced by Spanish folk music in which the guitar is central. Although he composed only one piece for that instrument his inspiration was flamenco and early Spanish music, including the guitar works of Gaspar Sanz. The guitar also features in Falla's first great success, the opera ‚La Vida Breve'. For this recording, we have selected and transcribed works in which the influence of the guitar was dominant thus translating these pieces back to their original source of inspiration.