What first catches the eye is the listing of three 'unknown' pieces by Falla, which were not published until 34 years after his death. Two are extremely early compositions, written while still a student at the Madrid Conservatory: neither reveals any nationalistic traits or, indeed, very much individuality. ''Cancion'' begins somewhat like a Satie Gymnopedie though with a more romantically flowing melody, which returns later against a counterpoint of semiquavers: ''Danza de gnomos'' is clearly influenced by both Grieg and Chopin (the latter a lifelong love—20 years later Falla wrote a light opera using Chopin's music). The third piece, dating from 1922, is a curiosity: an austerely dissonant arrangement of the Song of the Volga boatmen (five years after Stravinsky's version for the Ballets Russes): no one knows for what purpose it was written. Cristina Ortiz includes along with these an early work by Granados, his virtuosic, Lisztian Allegro de concierto, a rhapsodic rondo of a kind that, as eye-witnesses testified, he used to improvise with great facility. It is played here with all the brilliance, brio and bravura it calls for.
This improvisational quality is the key to the interpretation of Granados's masterpiece Goyescas. Formal construction (a common weakness in Spanish music) in these pieces is loose, and a sense of logical spontaneity is essential if cohesion is to be secured. Thomas Rajna has returned to the Goyescas after recording all Granados's piano works about a decade and a half ago for CRD (his 1989 comparative version listed above was a reissue), and has taken the opportunity of re-thinking some of the numbers. In general he takes them faster (knocking as much as two minutes off the ''Coloquio en la reja'' and the ''Balada''), which is all to the good, as in the earlier version the ''Coloquio'' tended to stick in places and ''Quejas'' included some dangerously extended pauses. He is now less forceful over the ''Requiebros'' (aptly for ''endearments'' or ''sweet nothings''), spikier in the ''Fandango de candil'', more dashing at the start of the ''Epilogo''; and in general his tonal palette is finely judged, though he does sometimes allow Lisztian exuberances (as in the ''Requiebros'' and the ''Fandango'') to assume undue prominence over the thematic line. (I am astonished, by the way, to find him in his introductory note thinking that majas were ''fashionable ladies''—they were essentially lower-class girls who loved finery—who ''were not disinclined to act as go-betweens for their charges'': he is confusing them with duennas.) Rajna is at his best in the eloquent ''Balada'' and the light-hearted El pelele (the straw dummy who is tossed in a blanket).
Ortiz shows greater tenderness and fervour in ''Requiebros'', is vivid in the ''Coloquio'', and in the ''Balada'' is excellent at catching the music's swiftly changing moods: there are beautiful nuances in the ''Quejas'', in which she employs less rubato than Larrocha (Decca) while still preserving flexibility—but her nightingale at the end is unnaturally loud. (This cannot be attributed to the lively acoustic in which the recording was made, though this does make the start of the ''Fandango'' over-resonant and less crisp.) Her range of dynamics is large, making for a decidedly insistent ghost in the ''Epilogo'' and a rather noisily hearty ''Fandango'' (yes, I know it's marked gallardo). Unlike Rajna and Larrocha, she does not include El pelele, which admittedly was published separately but logically belongs with the other pieces.
With all their good qualities, however, neither Ortiz nor Rajna can eclipse Larrocha's superb performance of Goyescas, so full of fantasy, delicate nuances and subtle phrasing. Much the same goes for the Danzas espanolas too. Rajna's performances are worthy of respect, but Larrocha's, besides being more recent with splendid engineering, so that the vividness of sound matches that of her playing (in which her rubato is a model of sensibility), had the inestimable advantage of being soaked in this music at its source: she was a pupil of the legendary Frank Marshall who was the director of the school in Barcelona previously run by Granados himself, and where the traditions of his music were uniquely strong.'