Turina

[Brian]

Thanks much! No wonder I had never seen that "Bailete" construction before if you hadn't either. It must be the antiquated ancestor of today's diminutive -ito, -cito, -tito forms. I hope you had a good dinner in London to salvage the flight delay. Perhaps at a Scottish-Spanish fusion restaurant like Maresco 

[ritter]

Thanks much! No wonder I had never seen that "Bailete" construction before if you hadn't either. It must be the antiquated ancestor of today's diminutive -ito, -cito, -tito forms.

¡De nada! 

I hope you had a good dinner in London to salvage the flight delay. Perhaps at a Scottish-Spanish fusion restaurant like Maresco 

Didn't know that place. Looks interesting, daring almost. I feared to find haggis al pil-pil on the menu, but it's fortunately not that daring.  Must explore some next time.

Spent the day today with my daughter, her husband and my 3-month old granddaughter at the enchanting setting of the Hurlingham Club in Fulham, so the flight disruption was a blessing.

[Florestan]

Bailar usually is not reflexive, and the normal imperative  would be ¡baila!

As in here:

[Brian]

Vol. 4 is all miniatures, music for children, or depictions of children. Track 1 gets you in the mood with a "prelude and fugue" that is a cheeky scherzo with a fugal trio...and the fugue is on the simplest "melody" of all, a straight 1-2-3-4-5 up the scale! I like the Spanish flavor of the "Sentimental Duet" and a rather Debussian work that is titled "?"; "L'ecole" is also a Debussy tribute (Petite Suite, I think). "A la memoire d'un bebe" evokes the cheery soundworld of Grieg's Lyric Pieces before pivoting to a Dies irae quote that really does not fit into the rest. "Jeux" quotes a number of children's songs, including the one known in English as "For he's a jolly good fellow."

Pleasant miniatures, nothing ambitious. I'm not sure the piano was always perfectly in tune.



This is probably my favorite installment since Vol. 1. All the music covers Spanish places and scenes, so it's explicitly nationalist in the manner of the Granados Danzas or the Albeniz Suite. The tunes aren't as catchy as Albeniz', but the two series of Cuentos are somewhat unified by dramatic arc and shared motifs, and the music is unfailingly pleasing. In Series 1, No. 5 has a recurring rhythmic moment that reminds me of Petrushka. No. 6 (Málaga) has a very slight Moorish-exotic feel.

Recuerdos de la antigua España may be a little misleading - the movement titles Carmen and Don Juan are unrelated to the legendary operas - but it is a suitably nostalgic look back from the late 1920s to the golden age of the zarzuelas. The Habanera actually reminds me of Gershwin, like a Latin version of the "Novelette in Fourths."

Listening, I'm aware that this music from 1918-31 is frozen in time around 1898, but Turina's capability to write genial crowd-pleasers was apparently as unlimited as, say, the Strauss family. This does mean I start feeling ready for a new style of music after the 45 minute mark of each of these CDs... 



Vol. 6 is devoted to Fantasías, works of about 10-15 minutes in length that share that title, spanning from 1928 (age 46) to 1944 (age 62, five years before he died).

Ritmos (Fantasía coreográfica) is a punchy sequence of dances with a short introduction, and some of the most Spanish nationalist music of the series so far. I'd like to hear a different recording of this, in a larger and less claustrophobic acoustic (this sounds like it was done in a very small room), by a more flamboyant pianist. Unfortunately the only other recording of the piano version, according to Presto's database, is by Martin Jones. (There is also an orchestral version.)

Fantasía sobre 5 notas is a suite on the name ARBOS, with r = re, o = do, s = sol. There's a toccata, fugue, and chorale, a nod to neoclassicism. By contrast, there's a singsongy cheeriness to the Fantasía italiana. Fantasía cinematografica claims inspiration from film, but in reality is a rondo of disconnected episodes, all of them rooted in Spanish dances (even the fugato). It has a joyfulness that suggests it was composed in later, not earlier, 1945.

The three movement suite Fantasía del reloj (Fantasy of the Watch) depicts various times of day, though here, as usual, Turina doesn't have the expressive range of a composer like Debussy or Mompou to really convince. Finally, we have a four-movement suite, Poema fantástico, with titles like "in the lobby of a hotel" (a rather grand old property, it sounds like) and "the old streets of Madrid." "Encrucijada" ends with an unusual bit of minor-key dissonance for Turina, the first track on the whole album that sounds like it was written after 1905 or so.

Overall I will say I am getting less and less interested in continuing this listening adventure because it seems like the wide variety of colorful names is concealing a series of musical works that are all basically light salon entertainments. Some of it is good. But he wrote a LOT of music!

[Florestan]

"A la memoire d'un bebe" evokes the cheery soundworld of Grieg's Lyric Pieces before pivoting to a Dies irae quote that really does not fit into the rest.

The title suggests a dead baby so Dies irae might not be that mismatched after all.

[Brian]

The title suggests a dead baby so Dies irae might not be that mismatched after all.

I meant musically it doesn't fit in - the music just suddenly changes, as if the baby was alive until halfway through the piece.