The booklet cover picture of Gaudí’s cathedral is apt. Leonardo Balada was born in 1933 in Barcelona‚ where he graduated before studying in New York; he is now established as professor of composition at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. If proof were required that significant Spanish‚ post­Rodrigo compositional life exists‚ and that it is influenced by‚ though not obsessed with‚ Spain’s past‚ Balada would suffice to provide it. There are folk­musical elements in all three concertos‚ variously juxtaposed and contrasted with overtly ‘modern’ passages. The Concierto mágico marked the end of his first period in which the modernity remained rooted in harmonic and rhythmic tradition‚ whilst the other two (later) concertos go much further along the 20th­century road. The leaps or drifts from traditional to later (and vice versa) are made in such a way that they sound natural rather than jolting. In the Piano Concerto the first movement draws on the elements of the paso doble (a feature of bull­fights)‚ the second evokes the ‘mysteries of medieval music’ from Andalusia and North Africa. And the third is a jota from Aragon. Each movement of the Flute Concerto contains a Catalan folksong. In places the orchestra recreates ‘indigenous’ instrumental sounds – an organillo (a folk barrel organ) in the Piano Concerto‚ and Catalonian folk instruments in the Flute Concerto. Predictably‚ the guitar is at times asked to assume the mantle of its flamenco cousin and the orchestra helps by supplying the hand­clapping. All three works make demands‚ the heaviness of which the soloists give no hint. Naxos is performing a valuable service by focusing on this most creative composer in this recording and in his previous one.