Opportunities to hear contemporary Spanish music aren't exactly abundant in this country (or any other country outside Spain for that matter), so when a disc comes along offering us a chance to sample the music of one of its leading exponents it certainly deserves praise for initiative and enterprise at least. Whether the two symphonies presented on this disc provide the best introduction, is, however, another matter. It's not that I dispute the widely held opinion that Marco is probably one of Spain's most gifted contemporary composers, or even that the symphonies in question are not without a certain degree of individuality. It's more a question of variety. Marco, as the lavish sleeve-notes inform us, is an exceptionally prolific composer whose music has embraced many different styles ranging from the conventional to the avant-garde and through to a more recent, highly personal brand of reductionism. It therefore would have been nice to have been presented with a more varied programme.
Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5 date from 1987-89 and fall into his 'reductional' phase, though I should add that the sleeve-notes are at great pains to point out that he is not a minimalist in the generally accepted sense of the word. They also both have several characteristics in common—namely, his interest in cosmological models (borne out by their subtitles Broken Space and Models of the Universe), a desire to write musical structures of unbroken span without pause or interruption (Marco describes breaks between movements as ''only good for coughing, or occasionally tuning up''), and an almost neurotic preoccupation with the opening bars to Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra. The Fourth Symphony consists of four interconnected movements, of which the first, ''Quasi Star'', is a colourful study in high-pitched, rapid sounds (occasionally interspersed with dreamy, sensual passages for strings a la Szymanowski), the second, ''Hiperborea'' a study in low-pitched slow moving music, the third, ''Almost a Rock'' invoking the dance rhythms of rock music, and finally the fourth, ''Solar is'', which recapitulates material from the preceding movements and where the first three notes of Also sprach Zarathustra rise repeatedly sphinx-like out of the texture. The inclusion of the latter, Marco tells us, is something of a private riddle.
Whatever the significance of the riddle, it is still very much in evidence in the Fifth Symphony. He also remains fairly enigmatic about the significance of the subtitle, save that he uses several theories concerning the universe in his formal construction of the work. More significant for the listener, perhaps, is the fact that the symphony was written for the Festival of the Canary Isles, and as such pays homage to the seven islands that make up the archipelago. In many ways it picks up from where the Fourth Symphony left off, especially where its preoccupation with quotation is concerned; the motto theme from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony makes several unexpected appearances, but more importantly so does the Also sprach theme. This dominates the imposing (and not unimpressive) first movement ''Achinech'' (Tenerife), but its constant repetition without resolution throughout the remainder of the symphony has a similar irritating effect as that of someone scraping their fingernails down a blackboard. Ultimately it is this constant use of unexplained quotation set against Marco's own highly colourful and brilliantly orchestrated (but otherwise pretty unmemorable music) that left me wondering whether these particular symphonies were the best pieces with which to begin an exploration of this composer's music. I should like to hear more from this composer before making my final judgement.
The performances from Jiri Belohlavek and the Czech Philharmonic (Fifth Symphony) and Victor Pablo Perez and the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra (Fourth Symphony) have passion and commitment, and the recordings capture the power and colour of this music particularly well.'