This engaging new release leaves no doubt that the sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy song of the cello can pull off a Spanish accent just as well as that of the classical guitar. With “Ibérica”, French cellist Anne Gastinel and Argentinean guitarist Pablo Márquez (whose recording of the vihuela music of Luys de Narváez so impressed recently – ECM, 10/07) bring an urbane and sophisticated yet earthy and sensual quality to the songs and dances of Falla and Granados, as well as the solo guitar and solo cello music of the great Spanish cellist and friend of Andrés Segovia, Gaspar Cassadó. The opening Danza española No 1 from Falla’s La vida breve is a revelation, Gastinel’s spiccato-studded bowing showering fiery notes over Márquez’s crisply articulated accompaniment; the Intermezzo from Granados’s opera Goyescas and the same composer’s tonadilla La maja dolorosa meanwhile highlights the intense beauty of Gastinel’scantabile playing.

In another tonadilla, the well known La maja de Goya, Márquez displays the finely nuanced singing quality of his own playing; he is equally convincing in three works for solo guitar by Cassadó (here recorded for the first time), especially in the moving Canción de Leonardo, a homage to Segovia’s young son who was killed in an accident in 1951.

Gastinel also makes a solo contribution with Cassadó’s famous Suite for solo cello, fully availing herself of the expressive possibilities of this superb, multifaceted work. But this disc ultimately belongs to the chemistry that seems to exist between these two remarkable musicians.