Spanish musicians: Pablo Casals

After this fairly breathless survey of Spanish composers we can now turn to Spanish performers, and the first of these must certainly be the cellist Pablo Casals. In his lifetime loved and revered throughout the world, he was born in El Vendrell, Catalonia in 1876, showed an early fascination with the cello and became the instrument’s foremost exponent of his generation. In 1893, Albeniz heard him playing in a café, gave him a letter to the private secretary of Cristina, the Queen Regent who granted him a royal stipend to study in Madrid. His career, developed, as brilliant cellist (especially in Bach), teacher and soloist with the major orchestras of the world, as well as a conductor himself. His deeply felt performances becoming legendry. As with so many other artists of his generation he was a republican (despite The Queen Regent connection – and later playing before Queen Victoria ), was so utterly opposed to Franco that he left the country and eventually settled in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Vowing never to return to his home country until the regime was banished, he in fact died before that happened. But he was posthumously honoured by the government of King Juan Carlos in 1976, three years after his death at the age of 96.

He founded the Prades Festival in 1950 and was its director until 1966. The following year he inaugurated a Festival in San Juan (his mother was born there). He was by then 80 years old and after a colourful love life, married one of his young pupils, Marta Montel. He made many recordings some of them including those of the famous trio he formed with Jacques Thibaud and Alfred Cortot, some of which are still available. Serveral of his many master classes in the 1960’s were televised.

The British music critic W.J.Turner heard him play in Vienna in 1913 and wrote later in a letter: ‘his playing…is one of those rare things that may only come once in a lifetime…it may be centuries before there is anyone like that again. He is a funny little fellow only about 30 and plays with his eyes shut and practically the whole time, every note every pause and tone colour is reflected in his face and to hear him again, to draw the bow across ppppp, is a revelation’.

B.R.

El Maestro Rodrigo

Known internationally by one immensely popular work, Rodrigo was in fact the composer of 170 pieces, including 11 concertos, many choral and orchestral works, songs, duets for piano and guitar and music for the ballet, theatre and cinema. ‘During the second half of the 20th.century, Rodrigo came to occupy a position in Spanish musical life close to that of that of Manuel de Falla. Like his mentor, ‘he cultivated a style far removed from the major currents of European musical development and…his music needs to be judged in the context of Spain’s classical and traditional music, art and literature.’ (NGDM).

Moving from my own narrow perspective, I have been listening to some of his piano and orchestral works in the excellent Naxos ‘Spanish Classics’ series. I have been surprised at the abrasive even aggressive style he employs in some of these pieces. The four movement Concierto heroica para piano (a revision by Joaquin Achucarro of an earlier work) begins with an avalanche of clamorous orchestral rhythms and although the work settles down to a more even dynamic with the beautiful Largo second movement, this is the proud distinctive Spanish style to which the quotation from NGDM refers. It takes some getting used to for someone who is more used to the differently structured North European classics. But, once in the idiom of this Iberian modernism, here is profoundly moving and arresting music.

Similarly on a disc of piano music (first in a promised series) played with virtuosity by Artur Pizarro. The first piece is A l’ombre de Torre Bermeja and it begins with a crashing chord followed by a cascade of arpeggios and then moves into one of the many tunes that fill this disc – such as the two lullabies – Spring and Autumn, but even there the latter of these is marked by a limpid dissonance as it slowly travels in and out of the minor key. There are times when one listens to these works that the figuration of music for guitar seems never far away. This is beautiful, intellectually demanding, brilliantly colourful music and never a matter of sound for sounds sake.

King Carlos 1 awarded Rodrigo and his wife the appropriate hereditary title of Marqueses de los Jardines Aranjuez in 1992. More about Maestro Rodrigo in Spanish Modernists V

B.R.

Spanish Modernists 5

At last – Joaquin Rodrigo( 1901-1999), surely the best known Spanish composer of our age. His Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and small orchestra must be amongst the top ten concertos: played throughout the world and in many different versions (such as the brass band arrangement in the British film Brassed Off !). I heard John Williams play it in a concert in London’s Royal Festival Hall in the nineteen eighties, and joined in the ovation when Rodrigo himself rose to acknowledge the applause, even then a frail man with a stick and dark glasses. (John Williams will be playing the Concerto again in the Last Night of the Proms in the Albert Hall, London, in September - thereby redeeming the somewhat tribal jingoism of that strange event!). The work is a unifying experience for all those who love melody and form in modern music.

Rodrigo became blind at the age of three but even so and when quite young, he took lessons in composition with Francisco Antich in Valencia. When he was 26 he moved to Paris as a pupil of Dukas and later after his marriage to the Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi, returned there to study at the Conservatoire and the Sorbonne. During the Spanish Civil War he lived in France and Germany, and coming back to Madrid in 1939, was active there as composer, academic and music critic.

As the years progressed and his fame grew he toured widely, giving piano recitals and lectures as well as attending concerts and festivals of his own music. Various distinctions were awarded him and Alicante – the host city of euroresidentes – was amongst the many universities who gave him honorary doctorates. In 1978 he was elected as a member of the Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts, a place left vacant following the death of Benjamin Britten in 1978. During 1991 and 1992 a series of concerts throughout the world marked his 90th. birthday

Some personal response to his music next time.

B.R.

Spanish Modernist Music and the New World

Julian Orbon (1925-1991) was a new name to me and once again Naxos came to the rescue and introduced him to me – the disc I have includes his Symphonic Dances and the Concerto Grosso for orchestra and quartet [8.557368]. Orbon was born in Aviles, Asturias and although he travelled widely and finally settled in New York, he never forgot his roots and a happy connection is that on this CD the music is performed by the Asturias Symphony Orchestra. (I mention this cheap label a great deal but there is no connection between us, other than my admiration for their enterprise! Currently there are 26 discs in their Spanish Classics series).

Orbon’s mother died when he was young and in 1940 he and his father left Spain permanently for Cuba where he became involved with a group of artists and writers who advocated the convergence of American, Spanish and European ideas. Ramon Garcia-Avello in his excellent notes for the Naxos CD, refers to his assimilation of Cuban and American music. For a time he was taught by Aaron Copland. Politically he became disenchanted with the Castro regime, having earlier been involved in the Revolution. Choosing exile, he accepted an invitation to teach in Mexico in 1960. He always retained his Spanish citizenship, was thrilled when invited to participate in Madrid’s Iberian-American Music Festival of 1967, and last visited Asturias in 1986.

And the music? There are certainly signs of convergence. You can detect the Copland influence in the Symphonic Dances, which is the third piece on this disc. But I hear English influences too – Walton, the early Britten (composing in the U.S.A. in the early 1940’s), and even the eclectic Malcolm Arnold who luxuriates in the modern symphony orchestra as much as clearly Orban does, though perhaps with more confidence. If to my ears not sufficiently memorable, this small sample of his music sounds like the music of a composer who loved and wanted to celebrate the traditions of his native country, without being enslaved to them. I would like to hear more.

B.R.

Manuel Blancafort

These postings are a voyage of discovery for me and hopefully for those of you who may read them. (I am told that there have been more than 10,000 hits since we started, and they can’t all be by the same person!). I would be glad of comments, criticisms and corrections. I am no musician but I love music and have firm family connections in Spain, which I see as my second country, so I am finding this to be a happy conjunction of interests.

Manuel Blancafort 1897-1987 was a new name to me and I came across him when browsing in a CD shop - a dangerous occupation. Initially self-taught (though no doubt influenced by the output from his father’s pianola factory), he, like so many others, had lessons from the French composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger. Blancafort was part of the Spanish avant garde and one of the founders of the Grupo Neueva Musica. He was a celebrated choral conductor and for a time conducted a German Chamber Orchestra.

He lived long and lived quietly. He said that he always enjoyed silence and his own company, ‘I spent much of my childhood alone, not needing outside entertainment.’ Affected by new Russian and French music, admiring Albeniz and his Iberia and intent on resisting the cult of Wagnerism, he maintained a firm loyalty to Catalan music, which he believed to be ‘our lyrical tradition’s purity of expression’. His ambition was for ‘well made work’, intimate, and crafted in a non-improvised and non-spontaneous and balanced way.

There are two recordings of his piano music in the comprehensive Naxos range, and I bought the second of these today (Naxos 8.557333). Miquel Villalba, the pianist, plays many of the miniatures typical of Blancafort’s occasional pieces. On a couple of hearings, I like these nostalgic, rather elusive pieces (like the man himself perhaps), and if lacking a little in character, in main the music that I am hearing - mostly in the minor key- is gentle with flashes of sudden passion.

B.R.

Joaquin Turina

Manuel de Falla, was effectively a member of the second generation of Romantic Spanish composers, as was Joaquin Turina (1882-1949). Both composers looked back to what may be called the first generation – Enrique Granados (1867-1916) and Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909).

Turina was born in Seville and his first musical studies were in the Andalusian capital and then later in Madrid. From 1905 to 1914 he lived in Paris, studying under the pianist and composer Moszkowski and the French compser d’Indy. He became friends with Debussy and Ravel, and his music marks this interaction between the two cultures that is so characteristic of the period and which annoyed some of the musical establishment in Spain. In fact, although his earlier music could be described as modernistic, his compositions are clearly influenced by Andalusian popular sources.

I have a record in the Naxos Spanish Classics series which includes his Sinfonia sevillana, a robust and lively work with typical Hispanic rhythms and energy(8.555955).* Performed by the Castile and Leon Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Max Bragado Darman, the sound is perhaps a little brittle, but there is some lovely playing, especially by the woodwind. Winning the Gran Casino de San Sebastian prize in 1921, it’s a splendid work, with rich orchestration typical also of the other items on this disc.

Turina later became professor of composition at the Madrid Conservatory and music critic for the periodical El debate, frequently conducting his music throughout Spain and giving virtuoso pianoforte concerts to wide acclaim.

B.R.
*(Naxos have also recorded his piano trios and a disc of some of his many piano works.)

Manuel de Falla

If the history of a country can partly be expressed in its music, Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) personifies much of the feel and passion of the years through which he lived. Intensely Catholic, and by his lively correspondence, in touch with important figures in the arts and government, his music often mirrors the convulsive political changes the country endured before and during the Spanish Civil War. He was attacked by conventionally-minded critics (this is becoming a familiar theme) for his admiration of French music.

At first –with his home in Madrid – his compositions were in traditional tonal language. Then for a time he toyed with composing in the popular zarzuela style. But, feeling restricted by its formulaic mode, he later set himself the challenge of ’elevating traditional Gypsy music to the highest level of art’ (NGMD), whilst remaining faithful to its earthiness. Later still he was influenced by the neo-classicism of Stravinsky who visited Madrid when Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe were performing there. A consequence of this was eventually a version of his hugely successful pantomime ‘El sombrero de tres picos’, with designs by Picasso and choreography by Massine.

His final years were sad. He left Nationalist Spain for an engagement in Buenos Aires in 1939 and never came home to a country in which after the Spanish war and the death of his friend Lorca, he no longer felt he belonged. In poor health and often short of money he yet maintained his practice of giving all he could to the needy including Republican exiles in French refugee camps. He struggled with what was to be his greatest but at his death uncompleted work, ‘Atlantida’, an ambitious cantata which had religious and moral resonance for him.

Remembered most for his colourful and folkloric compositions rather than his eclectic work of the 1920’s, his works are ‘striking examples of what could still be accomplished within a tonal framework in the first half of the twentieth century’. (NGDM). If music is indistinguishable from the personality of its composer (and I believe that to be true – which is why I find Wagner a problem), here is a man I would like to know more about.

B.R.

More about Manuel de Falla in previous post beginning this series: Spanish modernists

Spanish Modernists l

It was the Cinema that began my conversion to the music and musicians of Spain. On our frequent Saturday visits during the 39-46 War, we came under the spell of Hollywood musicals. It was the time of Stokowski’s ‘Fantasia’ (with a little bit of help from Walt Disney) and the popularisation of classical music. In one such film and I think in the last year of his life, Sergei Rachmaninoff made an appearance. The mainstay of many films at this time was the urbane Spanish pianist Jose Iturbi. Born in Valencia in 1875, Iturbi had a successful concert career and at one time was conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in the U.S.A. His screen performance of Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance became a great hit, and for a long time de Falla was the only Spanish composer I knew. I still have an L.P. made in the mid 60’s of his gorgeous ‘Nights in the Gardens of Spain’ and have been playing it as I write. (There’s a clip of an Alicia de Larrocha performance on the BBC -Music/Profile of de Falla).

Falla, a devout Catholic, never married, failed to save his friend Lorca from death, and emigrated to Argentina during the Franco years. His music is electrifying, soothing and lyrical – often all at once: a feast of changing rhythms and harmonies and vibrant orchestral virtuosity. Many of his works are on disc and are constantly performed. He studied with the French composers Dukas, Ravel and Debussy, influences which were in fact reciprocal, as we shall see later in these postings.

An interesting postscript to this first reference to a very considerable composer is that his teacher, Felipe Pedrell (1840-1922) believed that a nation’s music should be firmly based on its folk music, whereas de Falla was more interested in the spirit of such music. That makes sense to a northern European like me, for his music evokes the Spain that I have become familiar with and fondly appreciative of in recent years.

More about Falla next time.

B.R.

A French Diversion

Spanish music in its earliest days was influenced – like the rest of Europe – by Italian models and styles, but we have already seen in these postings how in the late 1800’s and 1900’s Spanish composers were stimulated by those French composers, who in music were as adventurous as their compatriots were in art. As I have said, it was a two-way process, as we shall see later.

I was interested to see some recent CD reviews of an opera by Ernest Chausson(1855-1899) who was mentioned last time as a teacher and friend of Albeniz. Even more surprising was its subject – King Arthur. Le Roi Arthus occupied the last decade of his life and with support and advice from Debussy. He wrote his own libretto, with the emphasis apparently on the love trio rather than the knights around their table . ‘An enchanting rediscovery ‘ says one review. (Leon Botstein conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, there are well known soloists, and the ref. is Telarc CD 80645 - 3 discs ).

But how come this common theme? There was his friend Albeniz struggling away with the triology which was never completed, with only ‘Merlin’ ever performed and then by an amateur group. Was Chaussen showing how it could all be done in one luxuriant and somewhat Wagnerian flourish? Though he was only 15 when ‘Merlin’ had its one and only staging, was were the two men influenced by the legend given prominence by Sir Thomas Mallory’ medieval romance and the many fictions that followed it? I have no answer, but the coincidence as you see, interests me.

Chaussen , a lawyer by profession, is today remembered mostly by his songs. He wrote only four symphonic works and I once had an L.P. of his Symphony in B flat major – lush and happily formless music which was good to hear on a bad day. Back to the Spaniards next time!

B.R.

Isaac Albeniz lll

A colourful character with pictures of him boasting a luxuriant black moustache and beard, smoking a cigar at the piano, it’s not always easy to distinguish the myths surrounding Albeniz’s earlier years from the reality. His mother took him to Paris when he was only six (some say he was seven) where he gave an audition for the Paris Conservatory and did remarkably well. One source says he was considered, not surprisingly, to be too young for admission, but another suggests he was turned down because he threw a ball at one of the windows there and smashed it. Another story suggests he ran away from the Madrid Conservatory where he was then studying at nine years of age and stowed away in a boat bound for Argentina, though this may have got confused with the tour of the South Americas that he carried out with his father, who in 1875 transferred as a Spanish customs official to Cuba. Another myth is that he studied with Liszt –whilst he travelled to Budapest with that intention, they probably never met. But he did study in Leipzig and Brussels, his fame as a brilliant concert pianist spreading beyond Spain as he toured the capitals of Europe.

Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922) – sometimes called the father of Spanish music - who had been critical of Turina, had a better pupil in Albeniz who shared his belief that music should be rooted in Spanish culture. His composing moved from the saloon style of lighter pieces by Chopin and Schubert, though in Iberia their influence remains (and that of Schumann I think), despite its Hispanic context. There is also of course the French influence that came later, and his friendships with Chaussen (more about him next time), Faure and d’Indy as well as his year’s teaching at the Schola Cantorum in the winter of 1897-98, will all have contributed to the bravura and lyricism, the contrasting rhythms and key changes of his later brilliant piano compositions.

Now very ill, in 1909 he and his family moved from Nice to Cambo-les-Bains the other side of the boarder from his birthplace, and there a few months later he died.
B.R.

*Read more about Albeniz on the many websites Google will take you to. There is also a biography ‘Portrait of a Romantic’ by Walter Aaron Clark (OUP 2002) with copies at £19.95 on Amazon, and the Foundacion Isaac Albeniz, founded in 1987, acts as a resource centre for continuing Albeniz research.