I think the arrangement by Surinach is just fine.
So do I
.
Surinach may be a bit more daring and “interventionist” than
Arbós (not surprising, given the years elapsed between the two approaches), but he does a splendid job. In
Rondeña (a piece I’m almost obsessed with, see as one of the highlights of the whole
Iberia suite and also as possibly the greatest fusion
ever of flamenco with “cultured” music), he brings the rhythmic complexity of the
petenera to the forefront most effectively, and also makes the felicitous choice of having the trumpets sound (at the reprise if the
petenera, after the quiet
guajira central section) slightly out of tune, as is usual in the music played during bullfights (Ronda has one of the oldest bullrings in Spain).
I totally forgot about the Ormandy set. I was hesitant to buy the album because it’s mono. I may buy it. Do you think I should?
I don’t know it, sorry (I only know it exists and has been reissued by Pristine). I’m perfectly content with
López-Cobos onz Telarc and
Morel on Australian Eloquence.
If you hear anything about a new arrangement or recording of Albeniz, please let me know.
The DG disc I posted also includes a piece called
Halfbéniz (
Halffter +
Albéniz, get it?
), which is a “fantasy” on
El Albaicín (from book 3 of
Iberia) and I very much enjoy (I am a great admirer of
C. Halffter’s music), but it is essentially an avant-garde piece in
Halffter’s
spätstil, in which
Albéniz’s original is only briefly quoted (but to great effect—this is a trademark recourse of Cristóbal’s style), and
Halffter’s gift (genius, I’d say) for dense and intricate, but also very effective and beautiful, orchestral palettes shines through in every bar.
There’s also this disc, of limited circulation AFAIK:
In it,
Albéniz’s
Rapsodia española (the original orchestration of which was lost, AFAIK) is given twice, in scorings by none other than
Georges Enesco and—again—
Cristóbal Halffter, respectively. Well worth listening to (and the two versions s sound—compared to each other—almost as if they were an entirely different work.
EDIT:
I see in the
webpage of
Jesús Rueda’s publishers Tritó, that he seems to have completed 5 of his orchestrations of numbers of
Iberia. This, added to the 6 completed by
Francisco Guerrero, would mean that only
El Puerto is missing to complete the whole series. You can hear snippets of some of
Rueda’s work if you hit on the titles of the individual pieces in the list of works on the link I’ve provided.
