Spanish Piano Music

Read About This Recording

Following his survey of Granados and Albéniz in Volume 1 of Spanish Piano Music, Martin Jones extends his reading of the Iberian soulscape in an even more remarkable, six-hour trove, called “enticing” and “delectable” by the Gramophone’s astute Bryce Morrison. The music of Joaquin Turina is what we think of as archetypally Spanish — playfulness laced with menace, edging into mordant passion and joy a froth springing from melancholy bitters. His two sets of "Mujeres españolas" are rife with a seductive charm which makes one avid to meet these “women of Spain,” while seemingly improvised, al fresco scenes and dances run together in a compelling chant de la terre similar to what his French contemporaries, Déodat de Séverac and Charles Bordes, were doing for, respectively, Languedoc and Basque country.

With Manuel de Falla we encounter a more self-conscious art which moves from some of the most fetching fake Chopin you’ll ever hear to an acerbically high strung maturity represented by the "Fantasia bética" and the somber memorial pieces for Debussy and Dukas, thus adding higher lights and deeper shadow to a familiar career.

Federico Mompou, on the other hand, will probably be a discovery for most listeners. Through the course of his long life, the limpidly childlike vein of his early work takes on a fastidiously muted, haiku — like simplicity which suggests more than it ventures. Unlike Falla’s full-blooded response to Chopin, for instance, Mompou’s dozen variations on the "A Major Prelude" brush what is already simplicity itself into aureoles, auras, enigmatic plays of light. And the world Turina took in such spontaneous, swaggering stride, Mompou views from an internal distance in a distilled, compact utterance in the Preludes and Cançons i dansas. Here, poignant, passionate evocations jostle memories of childhood, ringing out in plangent, piercing purity.

As Bartók, Kodály, Vaughan Williams and Grainger did for their ethnic heritages at the turn of the century, and even so cosmopolitan a composer as Karol Szymanowski was to do for his at the end of his life, these Spanish composers, in strikingly different ways, treasured up to a “life beyond life” (as Milton said of a good book) the cultural identity — or psychic terrain — of old Spain, even then being overtaken by touristic clichés and urban encroachment, before it became transmogrified by civil war and Modernism.

And that recalls us to Martin Jones, who has recorded (among other remarkable things) the complete works of Szymanowski and Grainger with virtuoso relish, defying the not unreasonable expectation that survey sets are bound to be rather mixed bags. Not to worry, Jones is a consummate artist who animates everything with prestidigital fluency and divinatory flair — you’re in excellent hands. Or, as the Gramophone’s critic has it, “music of an infinite fascination, performed with rare sensitivity, immaculate dexterity and temperamental ardour, all if it admirably recorded…”

Enjoy.

—Adrian Corleonis

Extended Article

Martin Jones is one of Britain's most highly regarded pianists, first coming to attention in 1968 when he received the Dame Myra Hess Award. Martin's first set of Spanish piano music (Granados and Albeniz) was described as a dazzling achievement and the interpretations as lavish and immaculately shaded accounts. This extensive survey of Spanish piano music is now concluded with five new discs devoted to Turina, Mompou and Falla.

Contents

de Falla: Allegro de concierto; Fantasia bética; Homenaje, Pour le tombeau de Paul Dukas; Homenaje, Le tombeau de Claude Debussy; Mazurka in C Minor; Nocturno; Obras desconcidas; Cuarto piezas españolas; Serenata; Serenata andaluza; Vals-capricho; Turina: Album de viaje; El castillo de Amodóvar; Sevilla Tres danzas andaluzas, Op. 8; Danzas gitanas, Sets 1 & 2; Mujeres españolas, Opp. 1 & 73; Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Sonata Pintoresca; Mompou: Cançons i dansas; 6 Charmes; Impressiones íntimas; Preludes Nos. 1-10; Scènes d’enfants; Suburbis; 12 Variations sur un thème de Chopin.

Martin Jones, Piano.