Throughout the LP and CD era we have had collections of Spanish orchestral music featuring one or other of Turina's exotic evocations, but this is the first proper historical assessment of his achievement, and it immediately shows his extraordinary orginality and sensitivity to Mediterranean atmosphere. Ravel's Spanish scene-painting is deflected through a prism of cultivated awareness; a Frenchman travelling south and responding with a personal, very Gallic sensibility. But Turina was born in Seville and the Spanish light was inherent in his very consciousness. Thus, the opening of the Danzas fantasticas immediately brings a piercing shaft of sunlight from the violins, then the spirit of the dance takes over. The mood of ''Exaltacion'' soon appears in the full orchestra, but there are kaleidoscopic changes of mood and the close brings haunting distanced effects, as if everything were happening in the imagination. ''Ensueno'' (the second number) opens dramatically, then evening bells toll gently and woodwind intone the undulating dance music; the soft evening string perfumes drift in with echoing flutes, and again the gently nuanced textures suggest a blissful dream. Even the energetic ''Orgia'', which opens with thrusting lower strings and bravura horns, makes way for the most delicate woodwind imagery and fragile violins.
La procesion del Rocio, Turina's first big success, was composed six years earlier, in 1913, and has a comparable ambivalence between the opening energetic ''Triana'' with its seguidilla and garrotin dance rhythms and the procession itself, which begins with flute and tabour and then reveals a tenderly yearning tune in the lower strings. Following this the music moves on to describe a gaudy religious occasion, full of Latin hyperbole.
The Sinfonia sevillana belongs to 1920, and brings even greater skill in placing atmospheric pictorialism within a firm structural framework. The opening ''Panorama'' is self-descriptive, but the flamenco spirit soon brings in the dance rhythms. In the evocation of the ''Por el Rio Guadalquivir'' (the river which runs through Seville) an exquisitely delicate violin solo leads to a shimmering imagery of the sunshine on the rippling waters, while the ''Fiesta'' finale errupts with exuberance and ends grandly.
Ritmos was written in 1928. Described as a ''Fantasia correografico'' it is neatly conceived, a joined series of six vignettes of enormous character and charm. The titles speak for themselves. A solemn ''Preludio'' leads to a measured ''Danza lenta''; then a ''Vals tragico'' acts as a foil for an engagingly scored ''Garrotin'', while a delicate ''Intermedio'' anticipates the lighthearted closing ''Danza exotica'', which recalls earlier themes in its vigorous coda.
The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra plays all this music with great distinction; full-bloodedly, yet with appealing finesse. Woodwind solos (especially Turina's dark-eyed favourite, the cor anglais) are a constant delight and Almeida ensures that the suffusing dance rhythms (Peterna, zapateado, garrotin, etc.) are all glitter and be gay; yet when the composer's mood is vigorous, there is plenty of orchestral vehemence. The recording is wide ranging, with the resonance adding a glowing bloom overall. It brings lustrous, often translucent string sounds, and only occasionally masks detail a little when the ample lower spectrum is at its most vociferous.'