Falla Vocal & Orchestral Works

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Manuel de Falla

Label: Harmonia Mundi

Media Format: Cassette

Media Runtime: 0

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: HMC40 1432

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
(7) Canciones populares españolas Manuel de Falla, Composer
Josep Pons, Conductor
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Teatre Lliure Chamber Orchestra (Barcelona)
Victoria de los Ángeles, Soprano
Concerto for Harpsichord and Five Instruments Manuel de Falla, Composer
Josep Pons, Conductor
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Teatre Lliure Chamber Orchestra (Barcelona)
(El) gran teatro del mundo Manuel de Falla, Composer
Cor Lieder Camera
Josep Pons, Conductor
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Teatre Lliure Chamber Orchestra (Barcelona)
Victoria de los Ángeles, Soprano
Psyché Manuel de Falla, Composer
Josep Pons, Conductor
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Teatre Lliure Chamber Orchestra (Barcelona)
Victoria de los Ángeles, Soprano

Composer or Director: Manuel de Falla

Label: Harmonia Mundi

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 43

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: HMC90 1432

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
(7) Canciones populares españolas Manuel de Falla, Composer
Josep Pons, Conductor
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Teatre Lliure Chamber Orchestra (Barcelona)
Victoria de los Ángeles, Soprano
Concerto for Harpsichord and Five Instruments Manuel de Falla, Composer
Josep Pons, Conductor
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Teatre Lliure Chamber Orchestra (Barcelona)
(El) gran teatro del mundo Manuel de Falla, Composer
Cor Lieder Camera
Josep Pons, Conductor
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Teatre Lliure Chamber Orchestra (Barcelona)
Victoria de los Ángeles, Soprano
Psyché Manuel de Falla, Composer
Josep Pons, Conductor
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Teatre Lliure Chamber Orchestra (Barcelona)
Victoria de los Ángeles, Soprano
Interest here is likely to centre on the hitherto unrecorded, and still unpublished, incidental music Falla wrote in 1927 for a production in Granada of Calderon's sacred play The great theatre of the world. Though this consists of only half-a-dozen brief fragments (the longest lasting just over two minutes), all of which are not original compositions but arrangements—items from his teacher Pedrell's Cancionero, including a cantiga by Alfonso el Sabio and folk-tunes from Galicia and Asturias, plus the ''Dresden amen'', a Gaspar Sanz fanfare and an adaptation of Victoria's Tantum ergo (a theme which also appears in the slow movement of the Harpsichord Concerto)—these are not negligible: a little mountain song, ''Toda la hermosura humana'', is quite lovely.
It is good to hear Victoria de los Angeles recapturing her early vocal quality in the Seven folk-songs, even if she sounds a little shorter-breathed and one or two of her words (e.g. ''lucerito'') get swallowed. She sings these in the orchestration of Falla's disciple Ernesto Halffter: skilful and colourful as this is, however, it does not have the incisiveness of the original piano version—and the conductor should certainly have curbed an over-enthusiastic timpanist in the ''Polo''.
The haunting cool atmosphere of the opening of Psyche is missed by the chamber orchestra, which is passionate and thrustful in its accents instead of evocatively calm (''la lampe est morte''); and the Harpsichord Concerto fails, not because of any fault of the soloist and his five colleagues but because, while Falla was insistent that harpsichord sonority should dominate, the instrument used here is hopelessly inadequate, pathetically frail and thin-toned.'

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