Cristobal Halffter (b.1930) has won deserved praise for his efforts, as promoter and conductor, on behalf of contemporary music. That his own compositions have made relatively little headway, at least outside Spain, can be construed as a tribute to their uncompromising toughness. But as this disc strongly suggests, another factor is their considerable unevenness.
The earlier work, the Violin Concerto (1979), is the least successful. Subtitled Versus, it opposes ear-shattering orchestral eruptions and violinistic material that is either reticent to the point of virtual inaudibility or else fixated on those tired recollections of traditional fiddle-style figuration that have been the downfall of dozens of other twentieth-century contributions to the genre. The last five of the work’s interminable 33 minutes offer hints of a less blatantly melodramatic conception but it is, to put it mildly, too little too late.
Mural sonante (1993) is less oppressive, a response to the paintings of Antoni Tapies which establishes a distinctive atmosphere and sets up the kind of sustained musical process in which evocations of a variety of modernist icons, not least Varese, can be given an appropriate context. Like Versus, it is too long, but at least I felt no inclination to cut the experience short, and the recording of what seems to be a well-prepared performance is less wedded to the exploitation of uncomfortable dynamic extremes than that of the concerto.'