Spanish Moreno

In this luminous memoir, Rita Moreno shares her remarkable journey from a young girl with simple beginnings in Puerto Rico to Hollywood legend—and one of the few performers, and the only Hispanic, to win an Oscar, Grammy, Tony and two Emmys.

Two of the works on this CD follow the 4 movement Classical era format while the other two show the decided influence of the Italian overture. The Spanish royal court and wealthy noblemen imported a generation of Italian musicians including Domenico Scalatti, Gaetano Brunetti and Luigi Bocherini. These composers inspired the local talent, and this disc highlights the results.

Who better to perform a further instalment in the exploration of Spanish Baroque musical life on record than Emilio Moreno and El Concierto Español, whose latest Glossa project tackles the dramatic work Iphigenia en Tracia by one of the leading lights of the time, José de Nebra! Having recently also given us readings of popular musical comedies from the end of the 18th century (La Tirana contra Mambrú) and a royal marriage commemoration by Antonio Caldara when in Barcelona at the start of it (Il più bel nome), Moreno now looks to the middle of that century when Nebra was attracted to one of Euripides' Iphigenia stories for one of his mythological zarzuelas.

The repertory of the Spanish vihuela from the 16th century remains little investigated, partly because few original instruments exist; when vihuela works appear on recordings they are often played on the lute or guitar. This is a shame, for the instrument has its own sound and a repertory (albeit one that often claimed playability on various instruments) that exploited that sound. The vihuela is large, with six pairs of strings running up a large body and long neck, and the music on this album exploits the instrument's rich sonority and capability for ornamentation rather than the rapid runs, called redobles in Spanish, that are characteristic of music for other plucked stringed instruments.