JANUARY 2020 | Ray's Round-up: Enrique Granados (1867-1916) - a Collector’s Guide

JANUARY 2020 | Ray's Round-up: Enrique Granados (1867-1916) - a Collector’s Guide

By RAY PICOT

INTRODUCTION

The live presentation on Enrique Granados, held at the Instituto Cervantes on 24 October 2019 as part of ILAMS’ Echoes Festival, gave me an opportunity to play some recent recordings that have crossed my path or reviewed, and an opportunity to look back at some classic recordings of key works. I would like to acknowledge the indispensable comments and help from Douglas Riva, one the foremost authorities on Granados’ music, and the Assistant Director of the Boileau Granados Edition, alongside Alicia de Larrocha. I am also grateful for the insights and information provided in the most important English language publication on the composer, The Poet of the Piano by the eminent musicologist Walter Aaron Clark.

For the relative newcomer to Granados, most of the composer’s finest piano works can be found in his collections or suites, listed below:

Valses poéticos (1895)
Seis piezas sobre cantos populares (1895)
Danzas españolas (c1888)
Escenas románticas (1904)
Escenas poéticas (1912 and later)
Goyescas (1909/14)

A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Enrique Granados is seen as part of a triumvirate of great Spanish composers in the early 20th Century, with Isaac Albéniz and Manuel de Falla.

Both Albéniz and Granados are chiefly remembered for their overtly Spanish piano cycles, Iberia and Goyescas, They were close friends and colleagues who studied under the ‘father’ of nationalist music in Spain, Philipe Pedrell in 1880. Sadly they both died when their international reputations were taking-off. In Granados’ case it was drowning after a torpedo struck the ship he and his wife were travelling in back from the United States, in 1916.

Granados was drawn to the music of Chopin, Schumann, Scarlatti and latterly after his death in 1909, his friend Albeniz. He wrote music in both a Spanish folk-influenced style and a central European idiom, and was an unashamed romantic. He successfully combined his family life with a career as composer, pianist and pedagogue.

Following Granados’ death many of manuscripts were in disarray with some lost or broken up, between family, friends and organisations. Over the past few decades key individuals have been working to collate these and achieve reliable performing editions and reconstruct some works thought to be incomplete.

RECORDINGS OF PIANO MUSIC

From the point of view of the completist, there are two cycles worth considering, by Martin Jones and Douglas Riva, with both pianists offering well thought out and broadly idiomatic interpretations. However, whilst Jones is a great ambassador and explorer of Hispanic music, I feel that the authentic insights that Douglas Riva offers in his more complete eleven volume series for Naxos is the one to own. He also has the benefit of historically informed editions, in which he was actively involved in researching, and includes many works that were simply not available when Jones’ pioneering recordings for Nimbus were released in the 1980’s. I also feel that Riva has developed a very nuanced approach to this music, born of deep familiarity and close working with his mentor Alicia de Larrocha, bringing out unsuspected qualities, even in the many early pieces.

ALICIA DE LARROCHA

There are few who would question that Alicia de Larrocha was the greatest interpreter of Granados’ music, with a connection that went back to the composer through the Academy he founded in Barcellona. After Granados’ tragic death in 1916, the Academy was directed by his close friend Frank Marshall, who’s most notable pupil was Alicia de Larrocha. Born in 1923, Larrocha who started her studies at the Academy at the age of 4, and first learned to play a piece by Granados. She took over the directorship of the Academy after Marshall’s death and came to be closely associated with the music from her country.

In the last few years we have benefitted from some excellent reissues on CD of Alicia de Larrocha’s recordings going back to the start of her international career in the 1950’s, which include substantial quantities of Granados’ music, including Goyescas, which she recorded no less than five times. Except for an LP recording she made for Erato in 1972, these have all found their way onto CD, albeit in a wide variety of packages.

Frustratingly there is no definitive collection of the UK Decca Granados recordings made in the 1970s and 1980s, and if you disregard the mammoth ‘complete’ Decca recordings box of 41 CDs, you will need to either buy the three remastered-for-CD LPs or look for various repackaged collections. Otherwise the key sets of Granados/Spanish music Alicia de Larrocha recorded are as follows:

1955/6 3 CDs The First Recordings / American Decca (mono) reissued by Eloquence
1963/90 8 CDs Spanish Music Hispavox/EMI reissued by Warner
1990/4 3 CDs Granados Piano Music RCA Red Seal (24 bit) (No programme notes)

To complicate matters Larrocha recorded pieces more than once, so I have also summarised the recordings of the key piano suites of Granados against the individual recordings:

Bocetas (RCA)
Cuentos de la juventud (RCA)
Danzas españolas (US Decca, EMI, UK Decca, RCA)
Valses poeticos (EMI, UK Decca/RCA)
Seis piezas sobre cantos populares (EMI, UK Decca)
Escenas romanticas (US Decca, EMI, UK Decca, RCA)
Goyescas & El pelele (US Decca, EMI, UK Decca)

Before moving onto Goyescas, it is interesting to note that the Allegro de concierto and Danza lenta were the only individual pieces by Granados that Alicia de Larrocha recorded. There remains a wealth of individual works and smaller collections that are worth exploring, of admittedly varying musical strengths, so I asked Douglas Riva to suggest some to initially explore, alongside the relative volume in his Naxos:

Improvisación sobre la jota valenciana ( Volume1)
Preludio en re mayor (Volume 3)
Aparición (Volume 4)
Danza de la rosa (Volume 5)
Impromptu No. 3 (Volume 6),
El jardi d'Elisenda (Volume 6)
La gondola (Volume 7)

I also recommend Riva’s outstanding readings of Azulejos (the piece by Albéniz, completed by Granados) and Escenas poéticas, which both appear in Volume 5.

GOYESCAS

Listening to Alicia de Larrocha’s recordings made over four decades, there is a remarkable consistency in her approach, with perhaps the main difference being sound quality. For example, the 1955 mono recording of Goyescas, was remarkably singled out at the time by the eminent critic Lionel Salter as the best choice available, and this was when she was in her 30’s, and had not developed her international reputation. He commented on her pianistic vitality and poetic inspiration, which remained undimmed through successive recordings, garnering consistent praise, as she continued to refine her interpretation. The audiophile recording is RCA’s 24bit bargain 3 CD set which is an amazing package and hard to beat anywhere for quality and inspiration, whilst her style exhibits directness and a pared down rubato. However, I agree with Douglas Riva, that the palm goes to an especially vibrant and nuanced recording she made for Decca in 1976, first issued on LP and remastered digitally in 1984.

But that is not the complete story: there have been interesting new accounts recorded, but it is to the Spanish pianist Jose Menor, we should turn for the next chapter. His 2017 recording for the Spanish label IBS Classics, made after a series of highly praised international recitals, playing the complete work. He amply demonstrates his understanding of the dynamics of the music and the intentions of the composer, through an interpretation of great exuberance and poetic understanding, fully appreciating its darker undercurrents. His scholarly approach is underlined by his exemplary booklet notes, which provide an exhaustive and accessible musicological perspective on Goyescas and the other Granados pieces he recorded, that were also inspired by Goya.

I have to add by way of a postscript an outstanding interpretation of El pelele by Rosa Sabater. She was like Larrocha, a pupil of Frank Marshall, and a significant talent who was sadly lost to the musical world after she died in an air crash in 1983. In the opinion of Douglas Riva, Sabater’s is the finest version ever recorded.

THE COMPOSER PLAYS

Granados was a pianist of considerable repute and at the height of his career as a pianist coincided with the appearance of new recording technologies, namely acoustic recordings on 78 RPM double sided acetate discs and piano rolls played on the pianola or mechanical piano.

Granados made some acoustic recordings in 1912 in Barcelona for Odeon issued on 2 discs (two of his Spanish Dances, a Scarlatti Sonata arrangement and an improvisation on El Pelele) which are available in several compilations. However, Granados’ main interest lay in piano roll recordings, where he could record longer pieces, which he principally made in 1908 and during his fatal trip to the United States in 1916. The last ones benefited from improved pianola technology, which made the readings more sensitive to nuances in execution. It is interesting to note Granados recorded the complete Valses poeticos, which are Central European in style. These appear on the collection issued by Pierian The Composer as Pianist reproduced on a restored 1923 Fuerich Welte piano. The other selection has been reproduced on a modern concert grand released by Del Segno, but a word of caution, the designated numbers of the six selected Spanish Dances are incorrect. The recordings all include an improvised piece by Granados.

THE SONG OF THE STARS

Arguably the most important concert in Granados’ life was the one he gave on 11 March 1911 at Barcellona’s Palau de la Music Catalana. He included the completion of Albeniz’ piece Azulejos, the premiere of the first book of Goyescas and Cant de les estrelles (The Song of the Stars) for piano, organ and choruses. It is really a miniature piano concerto with the organ taking the role of the orchestra. The critics were unanimous in their praise but it was never performed again for nearly a century, despite many attempts to access and publish the score. Thanks to the perseverance of Douglas Riva it was revived to acclaim in 2007 and there is no question that this work is a masterpiece, written by a composer at the peak of his creative powers. The sole recording on Naxos with Douglas Riva at the helm is live and perfectly captures the poetry and virtuosity of the work, with a well nigh perfect balance between the performers.

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

There have been a few recordings of Granados’ orchestral music, including third party arrangements, but several important CDs were released by ASV about 20 years ago with the Orquesta Filarmonica de Gran Canaria conducted authoritatively by Adrian Leaper, including the first recording of the symphonic poem Dante. Whilst these are excellent, they are now superseded by a 3 volume complete survey issued by Naxos, of original orchestral pieces in idiomatic readings by Pablo Gonzalez and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. It includes some attractive suites, a concertante piece and Dante, all of which show that the composer’s ability as a colourist was not limited to the piano. The preludes to his operas are not included, nor is the speculative reconstruction of the one movement torso of a Piano Concerto, though it has been recorded by Melani Mestre for Hyperion.

I singled out the melodically rich and attractively scored Suite sober cantos gallegos (Suite on Galician Songs) of 1899 and Elisenda, a mature concertante piece to which the vocal final movement has been lost. It is a lightly scored chamber piece for piano, 2 flutes, oboe, clarinet, string quintet and harp, redolent of French chamber music. Once more we have to thank Douglas Riva for the critical edition of the 3 surviving movements which are given an attractive performance on this recording, with the pianist Dani Espasa. Granados must have really liked this piece as he made attractive chamber/ instrumental arrangements of the individual movements, now recorded elsewhere.

CHAMBER MUSIC

Granados was an enthusiastic player in chamber ensembles though he only completed two works in this genre, both in 1895, the Piano Quintet Op.49 and Piano Trio Op.50. These can be supplemented by an incomplete Violin Sonata. These pieces are all written very well and are worth getting to know. The Piano Trio was considered by the composer to be his best work to date, and is altogether sunnier.

Naxos, who have done so much for Granados couple the Piano Quintet and Piano Trio in a recording by the LOM Piano Trio which has been well received overall, but its not the last word, compared with pianist Jean-Bernard Pommier who leads an excellent group of musicians on a recording for the Spanish label, Tritó, including additional alternative material for the Piano Quintet, plus a further edition of Azulejos. Mac McClure provides an authoritative reading with an excellent reading of the Piano Quintet on Columna Musica, added to which there is an interesting selection of the composer’s chamber music arrangements.

However, for the Piano Trio I must turn to a sparkling new rendition by Trio Rodin, incorporating the latest scholarly findings, for the Spanish label Aevea. In the past there have been many publication errors which the musicains have researched and corrected. Listening to this recording, one can appreciate the piece’s many strengths and qualities, which the composer recognised. It is accompanied by delightful arrangements by the composer, including the Galician Dance and the Trova from Elisende, alongside the World Premiere recording of a fascinating partial completion of the attractive and virtuosic Violin Sonata. Altogether a most attractive recording.

SONGS

Granados wrote two major song collections. The 12 Tonadillas (in the old style) of 1912/13 which are miniatures where the composer is further developing his vision of the works of Goya. Walter Clark points out that “these songs represented a genuine innovation in Spanish music, the creation of a distinctively Spanish ‘lied’ “ In them Granados evokes folk rhythms, modality and the guitar.

The other cycle is the 7 Canciones amatorias (Loves Songs) premiered in 1915 by one of his star pupils, the soprano Conchita Badia with the composer accompanying. He also dedicated two of the songs to her and Douglas Riva describes them as not so much songs but chamber music “in which the voice and piano are equal in importance”. They are quite ravishing in their textures compared to the simpler Tonadillas. Complete collections of both these sends are few, and many singers record a selection, such as Bernarda Finck who has graced us with some wonderful recordings of Hispanic songs. Luckily for us Conchita Badia (1897-1975) recorded with Alicia de Larrocha the complete Tonadillas and five of the Canciones in 1970, now available in a downloadable historic recording. With a lifetime knowing these songs and the composer’s intentions, this is a unique record, though sadly Badia’s voice is not at its best. However, the accompaniment on the piano is very characterful, which resonates through Larrocha’s other 2 recordings. Infact two years later, she accompanies in incomparable Victoria de los Angeles, recorded live, in a rewarding selection released on Warners 8 CD set of Hispavox/EMI recordings. Finally as part of an excellent 2 CD Eloquence reissue, the second disc being devoted to all the Tonadillas and six of the Canciones we hear them sung with great distinction by the Spanish operatic soprano Pilar Lorengar.

OPERA

In 19th century Spain any composer who wanted to make their name had to turn to zarzuela and opera. Granados was actually very successful in his theatrical works during his lifetime, and its good to note that there are now good recordings of his most important works Maria del Carmen (1899) and Goyescas. In addition Follet, Gaziel and Picarol, which are shorter pieces, are all recorded commendably by Tritó .

Goyescas lasts about an hour and is quite a static piece, based on the piano suite, and is ideally suited to the recorded media. Granados wrote this piece for a commission very quickly, and typically transcribed the piano suite for voices, doubling them in the orchestra, in a technique called ‘violinata’, much favoured by Puccini, and deleted repetitious passages. Granados wrote a new Intermezzo too, but died before he had any opportunity to revise the piece further. It is an attractive work and benefits from strong leads.

There have been number of recordings over the years but two make the grade: from last year Josep Pons (Harmonia Mundi) and Antoni Ros Marba (Auvidis) of 1996 vintage. Both have excellent casts with good choral and orchestral support. If you have Ros Marbi already I’d be happy with that, but the newcomer has a very good ambience and a zest in some of the numbers which perhaps comes from it being a live recording, giving it greater presence. Either way the opera is a most attractive piece to enjoy.


HOME ABOUT US CONCERTS NEWS & REVIEWS MEMBERSHIP COMMUNITY CONTACT US
News News Archive Concert Reviews CD Reviews Musicology Newsletter	JANUARY 2020 \| Ray's Round-up: Enrique Granados (1867-1916) - a Collector’s Guide JANUARY 2020 \| Ray's Round-up: Enrique Granados (1867-1916) - a Collector’s Guide By RAY PICOT INTRODUCTION The live presentation on Enrique Granados, held at the Instituto Cervantes on 24 October 2019 as part of ILAMS’ Echoes Festival, gave me an opportunity to play some recent recordings that have crossed my path or reviewed, and an opportunity to look back at some classic recordings of key works. I would like to acknowledge the indispensable comments and help from Douglas Riva, one the foremost authorities on Granados’ music, and the Assistant Director of the Boileau Granados Edition, alongside Alicia de Larrocha. I am also grateful for the insights and information provided in the most important English language publication on the composer, The Poet of the Piano by the eminent musicologist Walter Aaron Clark. For the relative newcomer to Granados, most of the composer’s finest piano works can be found in his collections or suites, listed below: Valses poéticos (1895) Seis piezas sobre cantos populares (1895) Danzas españolas (c1888) Escenas románticas (1904) Escenas poéticas (1912 and later) Goyescas (1909/14) A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Enrique Granados is seen as part of a triumvirate of great Spanish composers in the early 20th Century, with Isaac Albéniz and Manuel de Falla. Both Albéniz and Granados are chiefly remembered for their overtly Spanish piano cycles, Iberia and Goyescas, They were close friends and colleagues who studied under the ‘father’ of nationalist music in Spain, Philipe Pedrell in 1880. Sadly they both died when their international reputations were taking-off. In Granados’ case it was drowning after a torpedo struck the ship he and his wife were travelling in back from the United States, in 1916. Granados was drawn to the music of Chopin, Schumann, Scarlatti and latterly after his death in 1909, his friend Albeniz. He wrote music in both a Spanish folk-influenced style and a central European idiom, and was an unashamed romantic. He successfully combined his family life with a career as composer, pianist and pedagogue. Following Granados’ death many of manuscripts were in disarray with some lost or broken up, between family, friends and organisations. Over the past few decades key individuals have been working to collate these and achieve reliable performing editions and reconstruct some works thought to be incomplete. RECORDINGS OF PIANO MUSIC From the point of view of the completist, there are two cycles worth considering, by Martin Jones and Douglas Riva, with both pianists offering well thought out and broadly idiomatic interpretations. However, whilst Jones is a great ambassador and explorer of Hispanic music, I feel that the authentic insights that Douglas Riva offers in his more complete eleven volume series for Naxos is the one to own. He also has the benefit of historically informed editions, in which he was actively involved in researching, and includes many works that were simply not available when Jones’ pioneering recordings for Nimbus were released in the 1980’s. I also feel that Riva has developed a very nuanced approach to this music, born of deep familiarity and close working with his mentor Alicia de Larrocha, bringing out unsuspected qualities, even in the many early pieces. ALICIA DE LARROCHA There are few who would question that Alicia de Larrocha was the greatest interpreter of Granados’ music, with a connection that went back to the composer through the Academy he founded in Barcellona. After Granados’ tragic death in 1916, the Academy was directed by his close friend Frank Marshall, who’s most notable pupil was Alicia de Larrocha. Born in 1923, Larrocha who started her studies at the Academy at the age of 4, and first learned to play a piece by Granados. She took over the directorship of the Academy after Marshall’s death and came to be closely associated with the music from her country. In the last few years we have benefitted from some excellent reissues on CD of Alicia de Larrocha’s recordings going back to the start of her international career in the 1950’s, which include substantial quantities of Granados’ music, including Goyescas, which she recorded no less than five times. Except for an LP recording she made for Erato in 1972, these have all found their way onto CD, albeit in a wide variety of packages. Frustratingly there is no definitive collection of the UK Decca Granados recordings made in the 1970s and 1980s, and if you disregard the mammoth ‘complete’ Decca recordings box of 41 CDs, you will need to either buy the three remastered-for-CD LPs or look for various repackaged collections. Otherwise the key sets of Granados/Spanish music Alicia de Larrocha recorded are as follows: 1955/6 3 CDs The First Recordings / American Decca (mono) reissued by Eloquence 1963/90 8 CDs Spanish Music Hispavox/EMI reissued by Warner 1990/4 3 CDs Granados Piano Music RCA Red Seal (24 bit) (No programme notes) To complicate matters Larrocha recorded pieces more than once, so I have also summarised the recordings of the key piano suites of Granados against the individual recordings: Bocetas (RCA) Cuentos de la juventud (RCA) Danzas españolas (US Decca, EMI, UK Decca, RCA) Valses poeticos (EMI, UK Decca/RCA) Seis piezas sobre cantos populares (EMI, UK Decca) Escenas romanticas (US Decca, EMI, UK Decca, RCA) Goyescas & El pelele (US Decca, EMI, UK Decca) Before moving onto Goyescas, it is interesting to note that the Allegro de concierto and Danza lenta were the only individual pieces by Granados that Alicia de Larrocha recorded. There remains a wealth of individual works and smaller collections that are worth exploring, of admittedly varying musical strengths, so I asked Douglas Riva to suggest some to initially explore, alongside the relative volume in his Naxos: Improvisación sobre la jota valenciana ( Volume1) Preludio en re mayor (Volume 3) Aparición (Volume 4) Danza de la rosa (Volume 5) Impromptu No. 3 (Volume 6), El jardi d'Elisenda (Volume 6) La gondola (Volume 7) I also recommend Riva’s outstanding readings of Azulejos (the piece by Albéniz, completed by Granados) and Escenas poéticas, which both appear in Volume 5. GOYESCAS Listening to Alicia de Larrocha’s recordings made over four decades, there is a remarkable consistency in her approach, with perhaps the main difference being sound quality. For example, the 1955 mono recording of Goyescas, was remarkably singled out at the time by the eminent critic Lionel Salter as the best choice available, and this was when she was in her 30’s, and had not developed her international reputation. He commented on her pianistic vitality and poetic inspiration, which remained undimmed through successive recordings, garnering consistent praise, as she continued to refine her interpretation. The audiophile recording is RCA’s 24bit bargain 3 CD set which is an amazing package and hard to beat anywhere for quality and inspiration, whilst her style exhibits directness and a pared down rubato. However, I agree with Douglas Riva, that the palm goes to an especially vibrant and nuanced recording she made for Decca in 1976, first issued on LP and remastered digitally in 1984. But that is not the complete story: there have been interesting new accounts recorded, but it is to the Spanish pianist Jose Menor, we should turn for the next chapter. His 2017 recording for the Spanish label IBS Classics, made after a series of highly praised international recitals, playing the complete work. He amply demonstrates his understanding of the dynamics of the music and the intentions of the composer, through an interpretation of great exuberance and poetic understanding, fully appreciating its darker undercurrents. His scholarly approach is underlined by his exemplary booklet notes, which provide an exhaustive and accessible musicological perspective on Goyescas and the other Granados pieces he recorded, that were also inspired by Goya. I have to add by way of a postscript an outstanding interpretation of El pelele by Rosa Sabater. She was like Larrocha, a pupil of Frank Marshall, and a significant talent who was sadly lost to the musical world after she died in an air crash in 1983. In the opinion of Douglas Riva, Sabater’s is the finest version ever recorded. THE COMPOSER PLAYS Granados was a pianist of considerable repute and at the height of his career as a pianist coincided with the appearance of new recording technologies, namely acoustic recordings on 78 RPM double sided acetate discs and piano rolls played on the pianola or mechanical piano. Granados made some acoustic recordings in 1912 in Barcelona for Odeon issued on 2 discs (two of his Spanish Dances, a Scarlatti Sonata arrangement and an improvisation on El Pelele) which are available in several compilations. However, Granados’ main interest lay in piano roll recordings, where he could record longer pieces, which he principally made in 1908 and during his fatal trip to the United States in 1916. The last ones benefited from improved pianola technology, which made the readings more sensitive to nuances in execution. It is interesting to note Granados recorded the complete Valses poeticos, which are Central European in style. These appear on the collection issued by Pierian The Composer as Pianist reproduced on a restored 1923 Fuerich Welte piano. The other selection has been reproduced on a modern concert grand released by Del Segno, but a word of caution, the designated numbers of the six selected Spanish Dances are incorrect. The recordings all include an improvised piece by Granados. THE SONG OF THE STARS Arguably the most important concert in Granados’ life was the one he gave on 11 March 1911 at Barcellona’s Palau de la Music Catalana. He included the completion of Albeniz’ piece Azulejos, the premiere of the first book of Goyescas and Cant de les estrelles (The Song of the Stars) for piano, organ and choruses. It is really a miniature piano concerto with the organ taking the role of the orchestra. The critics were unanimous in their praise but it was never performed again for nearly a century, despite many attempts to access and publish the score. Thanks to the perseverance of Douglas Riva it was revived to acclaim in 2007 and there is no question that this work is a masterpiece, written by a composer at the peak of his creative powers. The sole recording on Naxos with Douglas Riva at the helm is live and perfectly captures the poetry and virtuosity of the work, with a well nigh perfect balance between the performers. ORCHESTRAL MUSIC There have been a few recordings of Granados’ orchestral music, including third party arrangements, but several important CDs were released by ASV about 20 years ago with the Orquesta Filarmonica de Gran Canaria conducted authoritatively by Adrian Leaper, including the first recording of the symphonic poem Dante. Whilst these are excellent, they are now superseded by a 3 volume complete survey issued by Naxos, of original orchestral pieces in idiomatic readings by Pablo Gonzalez and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. It includes some attractive suites, a concertante piece and Dante, all of which show that the composer’s ability as a colourist was not limited to the piano. The preludes to his operas are not included, nor is the speculative reconstruction of the one movement torso of a Piano Concerto, though it has been recorded by Melani Mestre for Hyperion. I singled out the melodically rich and attractively scored Suite sober cantos gallegos (Suite on Galician Songs) of 1899 and Elisenda, a mature concertante piece to which the vocal final movement has been lost. It is a lightly scored chamber piece for piano, 2 flutes, oboe, clarinet, string quintet and harp, redolent of French chamber music. Once more we have to thank Douglas Riva for the critical edition of the 3 surviving movements which are given an attractive performance on this recording, with the pianist Dani Espasa. Granados must have really liked this piece as he made attractive chamber/ instrumental arrangements of the individual movements, now recorded elsewhere. CHAMBER MUSIC Granados was an enthusiastic player in chamber ensembles though he only completed two works in this genre, both in 1895, the Piano Quintet Op.49 and Piano Trio Op.50. These can be supplemented by an incomplete Violin Sonata. These pieces are all written very well and are worth getting to know. The Piano Trio was considered by the composer to be his best work to date, and is altogether sunnier. Naxos, who have done so much for Granados couple the Piano Quintet and Piano Trio in a recording by the LOM Piano Trio which has been well received overall, but its not the last word, compared with pianist Jean-Bernard Pommier who leads an excellent group of musicians on a recording for the Spanish label, Tritó, including additional alternative material for the Piano Quintet, plus a further edition of Azulejos. Mac McClure provides an authoritative reading with an excellent reading of the Piano Quintet on Columna Musica, added to which there is an interesting selection of the composer’s chamber music arrangements. However, for the Piano Trio I must turn to a sparkling new rendition by Trio Rodin, incorporating the latest scholarly findings, for the Spanish label Aevea. In the past there have been many publication errors which the musicains have researched and corrected. Listening to this recording, one can appreciate the piece’s many strengths and qualities, which the composer recognised. It is accompanied by delightful arrangements by the composer, including the Galician Dance and the Trova from Elisende, alongside the World Premiere recording of a fascinating partial completion of the attractive and virtuosic Violin Sonata. Altogether a most attractive recording. SONGS Granados wrote two major song collections. The 12 Tonadillas (in the old style) of 1912/13 which are miniatures where the composer is further developing his vision of the works of Goya. Walter Clark points out that “these songs represented a genuine innovation in Spanish music, the creation of a distinctively Spanish ‘lied’ “ In them Granados evokes folk rhythms, modality and the guitar. The other cycle is the 7 Canciones amatorias (Loves Songs) premiered in 1915 by one of his star pupils, the soprano Conchita Badia with the composer accompanying. He also dedicated two of the songs to her and Douglas Riva describes them as not so much songs but chamber music “in which the voice and piano are equal in importance”. They are quite ravishing in their textures compared to the simpler Tonadillas. Complete collections of both these sends are few, and many singers record a selection, such as Bernarda Finck who has graced us with some wonderful recordings of Hispanic songs. Luckily for us Conchita Badia (1897-1975) recorded with Alicia de Larrocha the complete Tonadillas and five of the Canciones in 1970, now available in a downloadable historic recording. With a lifetime knowing these songs and the composer’s intentions, this is a unique record, though sadly Badia’s voice is not at its best. However, the accompaniment on the piano is very characterful, which resonates through Larrocha’s other 2 recordings. Infact two years later, she accompanies in incomparable Victoria de los Angeles, recorded live, in a rewarding selection released on Warners 8 CD set of Hispavox/EMI recordings. Finally as part of an excellent 2 CD Eloquence reissue, the second disc being devoted to all the Tonadillas and six of the Canciones we hear them sung with great distinction by the Spanish operatic soprano Pilar Lorengar. OPERA In 19th century Spain any composer who wanted to make their name had to turn to zarzuela and opera. Granados was actually very successful in his theatrical works during his lifetime, and its good to note that there are now good recordings of his most important works Maria del Carmen (1899) and Goyescas. In addition Follet, Gaziel and Picarol, which are shorter pieces, are all recorded commendably by Tritó . Goyescas lasts about an hour and is quite a static piece, based on the piano suite, and is ideally suited to the recorded media. Granados wrote this piece for a commission very quickly, and typically transcribed the piano suite for voices, doubling them in the orchestra, in a technique called ‘violinata’, much favoured by Puccini, and deleted repetitious passages. Granados wrote a new Intermezzo too, but died before he had any opportunity to revise the piece further. It is an attractive work and benefits from strong leads. There have been number of recordings over the years but two make the grade: from last year Josep Pons (Harmonia Mundi) and Antoni Ros Marba (Auvidis) of 1996 vintage. Both have excellent casts with good choral and orchestral support. If you have Ros Marbi already I’d be happy with that, but the newcomer has a very good ambience and a zest in some of the numbers which perhaps comes from it being a live recording, giving it greater presence. Either way the opera is a most attractive piece to enjoy. Site design and content copyright © 1998-2023 The Iberian and Latin American Music Society, all rights reserved. ILAMS is a registered charity, No. 1092749