Falla El amor brujo; Homenajes
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Manuel de Falla
Label: Valois
Magazine Review Date: 10/1996
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 46
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: V4768
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| (El) Amor Brujo |
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Barcelona Symphony Orchestra Edmon Colomer, Conductor Esperanza Fernández, Singer Manuel de Falla, Composer |
| Homenajes |
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Barcelona Symphony Orchestra Edmon Colomer, Conductor Manuel de Falla, Composer |
Author: Lionel Salter
As is well known by now, and is explained here by the distinguished Spanish musicologist Enrique Franco, Falla’s 1925 El amor brujo was preceded – as was his other famous ballet The three-cornered hat – by an earlier, less developed version with smaller instrumental forces. (The original gitaneria can be heard on Harmonia Mundi, 5/92.) What we have on this none too generously filled disc is the familiar more fully scored ballet; but someone has created stylistic confusion by engaging, instead of a concert soprano or mezzo such as is found on other recordings, a gipsy-style cantaora – who would have been suitable for the early version – with a typically harsh voice (which is fair enough) but very rough intonation (which isn’t, because it accords incongruously with Falla’s sophisticated and subtle scoring). Not that the intonation of the orchestra’s wind (particularly that of the trumpet) is entirely beyond criticism either; but on the whole this is a serviceable, if unmemorable, performance – in which, however, little alarm is generated by the “Dance of terror”.
The orchestra sound on much better form in the Homenajes, which were written in the mid-1930s except for the elegy for Debussy, which had started life a decade earlier as a guitar solo; but Colomer adopts such sluggish tempos in the homages to Debussy and Dukas as to threaten their cohesion and to weaken the point of the quotations from Soiree dans Grenade and the Dukas Sonata. The longer homage to Falla’s mentor Pedrell, with reminiscences of his La Celestina, comes off best in this galere.'
The orchestra sound on much better form in the Homenajes, which were written in the mid-1930s except for the elegy for Debussy, which had started life a decade earlier as a guitar solo; but Colomer adopts such sluggish tempos in the homages to Debussy and Dukas as to threaten their cohesion and to weaken the point of the quotations from Soiree dans Grenade and the Dukas Sonata. The longer homage to Falla’s mentor Pedrell, with reminiscences of his La Celestina, comes off best in this galere.'
Falla El amor brujo; Homenajes
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