Joaquin Llares

Turina's take on Spanish folk idioms is unmatched, and showcased quite nicely on this CD. The "Danzas fantasticas" are the highlight, but the romantic flair of all the works on this recording is not to be missed. The orchestra is brilliant throughout, and the technical aspects of the recording are lacking nothing. Absolutely no complaints, only pure enjoyment. You can't go wrong with this one.

The long total timings for Joaquín Achúcarro’s newly reissued Schumann C major Fantasy and Kreisleriana (recorded for Ensayo in 2003) do not necessarily indicate slow tempos, but rather reflect the Spanish pianist’s ample yet judiciously proportioned rubatos, together with his tendency to let resolutions and cadences breathe and resonate. Achúcarro’s insightful and well-varied balancing of lines in the Fantasy’s first movement compensates for whatever may be lacking in forward impetus and surface bravura. Is that an ambient change, a noticeable splice, or merely Achúcarro working his tone-color magic when the main theme returns 13 minutes into the movement?

When guitarist Jacob Kellermann and conductor Christian Karlsen devised the programme of this recording, one inspiration was the legendary jazz album Sketches of Spain on which Miles Davis performed arrangements of Spanish folk music, along with a version of the Adagio from Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Rodrigo’s work is a re-imagining of times past and of courtly life in the gardens of the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, and as such it is the perfect opening to Kellermann’s and Karlsen’s project, intended to conjure up Spain ‘as if through a prism – as a concept rather than a place’. In order to achieve this they have enlisted the help of Francisco Coll and Pete Harden, who have each contributed a concertante work for guitar and ensemble.

Joaquín Rodrigo is best known for his Concierto de Aranjuez, but the fame of this great work has hidden a prolific and courageous artist who struggled against blindness and hardship, and whose luminous, optimistic music is captured here in rarely heard works for violin that span almost his entire life as a composer. The timelessly beautiful Adagio from the Sonata pimpante is indeed comparable to that of the Concierto de Aranjuez, and all of these pieces are captivating in their intense lyricism and profound originality, from the Dos ezbozos expressing childhood memories of the Parterre Gardens in Valencia, to Rodrigo's only piece for solo violin, the Capriccio, and the vivacious and nostalgic Set cançons valencianes.

Performer, composer and teacher, Enrique Granados stood with de Falla and Albéniz as the most outstanding Spanish musician of his time. Among his dozen or so chamber works the Piano Trio and Piano Quintet, both from 1894, exemplify Granados’s highly expressive, Neo-romantic style, his piano writing revealing the hand of a virtuoso. Amiable touches of dance and salon music, hints of Moorish, gypsy and folkloric elements, co-exist in these beautiful, refined pieces. The famous Intermezzo from his opera Goyescas, an Aragonese jota, is heard here in Gaspar Cassadó’s popular arrangement.

On this, the largest set ever compiled of one of the last century's most popular composers, we may not only renew our familiarity with the Concierto de Aranjuez, or perhaps with one of the other ever-melodious guitar concertos that sustain his reputation with audiences, but also discover chamber, instrumental, choral and especially vocal works which testify to a creative imagination confident in the formation of its style but never satisfied with repetition, one which responded directly to poetic and lyric inspiration, and transformed its ideas with unfailing skill and respect for the idiom under consideration.