Ernesto Lecuona

Few singers — few musicians in any branch of the art, for that matter — can have ranged with comparable expertise over so wide a range of repertoire as the American soprano Carole Farley. From Monteverdi and Mozart to Shostakovich and Berg (she took the title role in the first British production of Lulu), from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by way of Offenbach and Grieg and Lehár’s Merry Widow to Poulenc and Weill and the music of her husband, composer-conductor José Serebrier, taking in Verdi, Puccini, Massenet, Strauss, Ives, and Aubert Lemeland along the way, and recently adding an exceptional disc of Rorem songs, she has performed opera, oratorio, and song with commanding vocal fluency, dramatic flair, and an astonishing linguistic versatility.

The pianist Pierre Solot here rediscovers the works of Ernesto Lecuona: their roots lie in many cultures and blend romantic virtuosity, Cuban dances, passionate avowals, evocations of distant lands, and the last decadent traces of 19th-century Vienna.

The pianist Pierre Solot here rediscovers the works of Ernesto Lecuona: their roots lie in many cultures and blend romantic virtuosity, Cuban dances, passionate avowals, evocations of distant lands, and the last decadent traces of 19th-century Vienna.

The dominance of rhythm in African and African-derived music is the pillar of this journey across piano pieces by Ernesto Lecuona and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, deriving from the combination of long melodic lines, often related to popular songs, with Caribbean and, in particular, Afro-Cuban rhythms. These are shown not only in the bass line, resembling drums and percussions, but in each rhythmic layer and in the melody itself. Each piece tells a story that evokes the spirit and energy of the composers’ native lands, Cuba and Louisiana, reflecting their historical and cultural landscape characterised by multifaceted influences. A vivid portrait of the Caribbean culture, in which dance has been used as form of expression since ancestral times, is rendered through this music, with those typical rhythmic patterns, such as tresillo, cinquillo and habanera, captivating and appealing to an European audience and loved by the American and Caribbean ones, unaccustomed to seeing their soul depicted in a music score.

The dominance of rhythm in African and African-derived music is the pillar of this journey across piano pieces by Ernesto Lecuona and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, deriving from the combination of long melodic lines, often related to popular songs, with Caribbean and, in particular, Afro-Cuban rhythms. These are shown not only in the bass line, resembling drums and percussions, but in each rhythmic layer and in the melody itself. Each piece tells a story that evokes the spirit and energy of the composers’ native lands, Cuba and Louisiana, reflecting their historical and cultural landscape characterised by multifaceted influences. A vivid portrait of the Caribbean culture, in which dance has been used as form of expression since ancestral times, is rendered through this music, with those typical rhythmic patterns, such as tresillo, cinquillo and habanera, captivating and appealing to an European audience and loved by the American and Caribbean ones, unaccustomed to seeing their soul depicted in a music score.