La ciencia llega a España: Goyescas

[Todd]

In the realm of classical music, my geographic tastes tend to clump into pairs.  At the apex stand, uneasily, the Germanic and Gallic composers, staring jealously at one another.  Beethoven and Schubert stand on one side, Debussy and Faure on the other, each claiming chunks of my time, each trying to outdo the other.  The next geographic duo includes the Czechs and the Spanish.  They produce very different composers, these two lands.  Spain, though, probably has the edge, for the Spaniards have a great musical legacy spanning centuries.  Acknowledging but not counting – though not not counting – the Catalan troubadours of medieval times and other musical traditions championed by the likes of Jordi Savall to start, a solid musical tradition has remained intact.  The Spanish Golden Age of Guererro and Victoria and, above all, Morales stands as the true apogee of Renaissance polyphony, the Flemish and the Italians be damned.  Damned, I say!  Then there's Galan, Nebra, Arriaga, Falla, Turina, Montsalvatge, Rodrigo, and the great, great, great Leonardo Balada, arguably the greatest living composer at the time of this writing.  In the realm of keyboard music, Spain has produced at least four titans: Soler, Mompou, Granados, and, of course, Albeniz. 

The last I will save for another time, but here and now, it became necessary to examine the greatest keyboard work of Enrique Granados, and one of the greatest keyboard works of all.  Using my trademarked and patent pending Scientific Listening Method®, I shall separate wheat from chaff, the mediocre from the great, and objectively evaluate and rank three dozen versions of the work.

As David Letterman once admonished: Please, no wagering.

[Todd]

#36

Cuban born pianist, professor, and friend to the great Jorge Bolet laid down her version a while back, and given the tenuous Bolet connection, I had to give it a shot.  The very slow opening Los requiebros reveals that the pianist can generate a big sonority, but it's quite ugly in places, almost vulgar.  The rhythmic elements veer back and forth between fluid and chunky, like an unfortunate can of Dinty Moore stew.  Things stabilize a bit in Coloquio en la reja, with the unfortunate chunkiness transmogrifying into more standard clunkiness.  And more ugliness.  The Fandango ekes out some more enjoyable playing, but some of the accenting and phrasing makes for less than ideally pleasing music-making.  El Amor y la Muerte definitely sounds intense and bold in places, and emerges as the best movement here, but it's an unfavorite.  That holds true for the whole recording. 

[Mandryka]

I find I enjoy Escandón on some days more than others.  I don't hear ugliness (though I guess the sound and the piano could be better) and I don't hear anything approaching vulgarity  fortunately. What I definitely find is that if I've got other performances in my head still, Escandón sounds wrong to me - if I approach it having forgotten the likes of  Eduardo Del Pueyo or Benita Meshulam or Michel Block or Santa Alicia of the Rock then she sounds more  satisfying.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

In the realm of classical music, my geographic tastes tend to clump into pairs.  At the apex stand, uneasily, the Germanic and Gallic composers, staring jealously at one another.  Beethoven and Schubert stand on one side, Debussy and Faure on the other, each claiming chunks of my time, each trying to outdo the other.  The next geographic duo includes the Czechs and the Spanish.  They produce very different composers, these two lands.  Spain, though, probably has the edge, for the Spaniards have a great musical legacy spanning centuries.  Acknowledging but not counting – though not not counting – the Catalan troubadours of medieval times and other musical traditions championed by the likes of Jordi Savall to start, a solid musical tradition has remained intact.  The Spanish Golden Age of Guererro and Victoria and, above all, Morales stands as the true apogee of Renaissance polyphony, the Flemish and the Italians be damned.  Damned, I say!  Then there's Galan, Nebra, Arriaga, Falla, Turina, Montsalvatge, Rodrigo, and the great, great, great Leonardo Balada, arguably the greatest living composer at the time of this writing.  In the realm of keyboard music, Spain has produced at least four titans: Soler, Mompou, Granados, and, of course, Albeniz. 

The last I will save for another time, but here and now, it became necessary to examine the greatest keyboard work of Enrique Granados, and one of the greatest keyboard works of all.  Using my trademarked and patent pending Scientific Listening Method®, I shall separate wheat from chaff, the mediocre from the great, and objectively evaluate and rank three dozen versions of the work.

As David Letterman once admonished: Please, no wagering.

Debussy's music sounds half-Spanish to me.

[Todd]

#35

Martin Jones' recording for Nimbus has that too resonant recorded sound, though it's easily bearable.  Jones plays well in terms of hitting the notes, but that's it.  It is the least idiomatic recording in this survey.  Rhythms don't really sound great, rubato is either not there or kind of drab.  Nothing compels.  It's not terrible, but nothing is great, either.  The Epilogue has the most oomph and succeeds the most, but when one considers the rest of the work, it just kind of falls flat and lacks personality.  It sounds like a sight-reading recording, which hopefully it is, because if it is studiously well prepared, that's no good thing.  So very meh.

[Todd]

#34

Abdel Rahman el Bacha, he of two LvB sonata cycles, a complete Chopin set, Prokofiev PCs, and much else, turned his attention to this Spanish work for Triton, which released the recording in 2017.  In predictably superb sound, one gets to enjoy some good playing where timings are brisk, the rhythmic component sounds emphasized over the tonal, and any sense of fantasy or programmatic inclination is muted.  Little Spanishness, however one wants to define it, seems evident in the Fandango, though el Bacha comes right on back and delivers a nicely flexible and alluring Lament to close out the first book.  The Ballad of Love and Death seems somewhat resigned, and could use a bit more passion and sorrow, though the Epilogo benefits from the snappy rhythmic playing.  So, nicely played, but lacking in a few areas.

[Todd]

#33

Shizuka Shimoyama benefits from splendid recorded sound in her take.  She plays everything well, with clean articulation and multiple displays of high end digital dexterity.  What goes missing is idiomatic playing.  Sure, she mixes up the rhythms and adds color and delivers wide-ranging dynamics, but it doesn't jell, it doesn't evoke any real passion or sense of romance or sense of Spanish style.  Tonal beauty and fine execution do not guarantee greatness. 

[Todd]

#32

Aldo Ciccolini's take is a swift, cleanly played, virtuosic, straight ahead to a big fault take that ends up just sounding meh.  Yes, he hits the notes, he plays loud or quiet as needed, slows down some in the slowest passages.  What's largely absent is rhythmic variability, expressive rubato, or expression generally.  It almost seems like another sight-reading recording, or a contract gig assigned at short notice.   This was likely the last time I listen to the recording.  The occasionally audible tape saturation does not help matters.

[Mandryka]

 Ciccolini is a cold dead fish marinated in French perfume.

[ritter]

#32

Aldo Ciccolini's take is a swift, cleanly played, virtuosic, straight ahead to a big fault take that ends up just sounding meh.  Yes, he hits the notes, he plays loud or quiet as needed, slows down some in the slowest passages.  What's largely absent is rhythmic variability, expressive rubato, or expression generally.  It almost seems like another sight-reading recording, or a contract gig assigned at short notice.  This was likely the last time I listen to the recording.  The occasionally audible tape saturation does not help matters.

I listened to Ciccolini's Goyescas just a couple of days ago, ad found it very disppointing (but I do remember liking his Iberia, which now I will have to revisit).

[Todd]

#31

Leopoldo Querol's Ducretet-Thomson recording from the early 50s, like Eduardo del Pueyo's later mono recording, has a big mono sound.  That becomes evident with the dynamic swings, which sound broad enough to satisfy.  Querol's tonal palette does not sound as diverse as other pianists, and his rhythm, while variable and in tune with the music, sometimes sounds a little heavy-handed when compared with other pianists.  He can and does do good work when he slows things down and plays with more nuance.  El Amor y la Muerte comes off best, with a bit less intensity and weight, and a bit more forlorn introspection tossed in, and the Epilogue maintains the same overall feel.  So, the work gets better as it goes on, but a stronger finish does not make up for a weaker start.

[Mandryka]

Totally agree -- I listened to Querol just a few days ago.

[Todd]

#30

Beatrice Berthold briefly recorded for EMI about thirty years ago, yielding three discs, including this one.  Naxos has reissued most of the music from them.  She has also made some additional recordings on small labels in the intervening years.  Ms Berthold certainly displays chops right from the get-go here.  Her take on Los requiebros glitters and shimmers, with a nice combination of bright color and digital dexterity.  She offers more of the same in Coloquio en la reja, and indeed, in the rest of the work.  But what it lacks is Spanishness, an idiomatic feel.  That's an amorphous assertion, to be sure, but here I mean that while she certainly shows command of the keyboard, being able to belt out a crescendo or play with clarity – or not, if needed – she does not deliver the minutely tapered note values or the ear catching rubato of others.  In terms of just offering some sweet ivory tickling, it succeeds.

[Todd]

#29
 
Emili Brugalla is a Spanish pianist whose Google translated bio states that we started off as self-taught before moving on to formal training.  Ain't no thing.  Arcadi Volodos purportedly didn't even take up the piano until he was a teenager, and he turned out fine.  So did Brugalla, though on evidence of this recording, he does not have the Russian-born Spanish resident's facility.  He does play the work swiftly across the board, with each movement quicker than normal.  The best shorthand way to describe him is as like Beatrice Berthold, but with more rhythmic variability and more rubato, and in a few places, a marginally more colorful sound.  Quejas, o La Maja y el ruiseñor ends up the relative high point here, as it flows beautifully, from beginning to end.

[Todd]

#28

Ana-Maria Vera's take is clear and clean with striking dynamic contrasts overshadowing the rhythmic fluidity and flexibility of some other versions.  There's directness to it, too, that sort of obviates any sense of poetry or romance.  As such, listening becomes something of an exercise in picking out voices and melodic lines and following them, appreciating the precise execution of an arpeggio here or trills there.  The recorded sound is clear, but perhaps a little too close, as the loudest playing sounds hard, nearly brittle, but there's something simultaneously refreshing about hearing such hearty thwacks. 

[Todd]

#27

Xiayin Wang counts among the current generation of pianists who seem to face no technical challenges whatsoever, and one hears that throughout her recording.  It's the second swiftest in the survey, and at no point does she seem to even break a sweat.  In some ways, it comes off as an updated version of Beatrice Berthold's take, sounding even sleeker.  Wang manages to make even some fast passages sound relaxed in tempo when they are not, and she moves up and down the keyboard nonchalantly, dispatches perfectly calibrated crescendos and diminuendos, plays with supremely fine clarity of voices.  Bass weight is ample where needed, delicate pianissimo is as delicate as can be, and so forth.  The sheen of technical perfection holds much appeal, but one can't escape the feeling that something more affecting goes missing. 

[Todd]

#26

Thomas Rajna's take is the second slowest in the survey, and start to finish there's a unique feel of leisurely tension.  He doesn't offer the same degree of free-wheeling rubato and rhythmic changeups found in better versions, but he offers some unique clarity of voices, where one can hear, with striking ease, some accompaniment figurations underlying the melodies.  Rajna's take is also less colorful than many versions, but there's stark beauty in his more limited palette.  While Rajna can and does crank up the volume, the extended timings often make the most dramatic playing seem like momentary outbursts in long streams of notes, sapping passion a bit, but replacing it with a different vibe.  In the long El Amor y la Muerte, the vibe is one of solemnity and introspection, and it's less immediate than other takes.  There's a calculated, abstract feel to the playing.  That's not a complaint, per se, but it yields a different effect.  The Epilogue has a bit more intensity in it, but it retains the calculated feel, but that's OK, and all the more so since Rajna also recorded all of Granados' piano music in a handy set. 

[Todd]

#25

Jean-François Heisser's recording is recorded very closely and very dryly, creating a salon-ish vibe rather than a full-blooded, robust one.  It almost sounds like it's played on a baby grand.  That means big, beefy forte playing goes missing pretty much altogether.  On the flip side, it means details rarely get buried in the mix.  Combine that with Heisser's remarkably fluid, easy, almost graceful style, and this recording offers a different approach to the work.  It has an almost easy listening sound, but that is meant in a positive manner, as the whole thing just unfolds at a comfortable but not slow pace, and the constrained dynamics help create an at times almost Debussyan sound.  Nice, if not one of the greats. 

[Todd]

#24

Jean-Philippe Collard's recording offers something appealing right from the start in that he manages to blend a relaxed and colorful sound to a basically perfectly average overall timing.  Los requiebros flows beautifully, it has quicksilver tempo changes, but everything maintains a leisurely feel.  The downside is that stark dynamic contrasts evident in some other recordings largely go missing, but that's fine.  The same fell carries right over to Coloquio en la reja, which has some extended passages of downright gorgeous playing.  The Fandango pulls off the neat trick of maintaining nice rhythmic flair yet sounding slower than it actually is.  After a lovely Quejas, o La Maja y el ruiseñor, the meatiest bit arrives in a El Amor y la Muerte, possessed of ample scale and heft, and a sort of romantic reminiscing of no little appeal.  The Epilogue closes out very nicely, and caps an older pianist's take.

[Todd]

#23

Everyone's favorite Tunisian born pianist Jean-Marc Luisada wastes no time in demonstrating his tendency to insert individual touches everywhere.  Whether in his DG or his even more idiosyncratic RCA recordings, he plays around with tempi all over, emphasizes or exaggerates both loud and soft playing, plays with remarkable clarity except when he doesn't, and so on.  He has the chops to pull off his conceptions.  Taking the message of a Michel Dalberto masterclass on this piece to heart, he likes to exaggerate.  Los requiebros, while middle of the road tempo wise, mixes some slow passages with some swifter than normal passages, especially as the coda approaches, to sound faster than its timing suggest.  After that, Luisada is slower than normal, as per usual, giving himself some breathing space in slower passages, stretching out some sections, compressing others, and he also throws in some bold, heavy forte playing for dramatic effect.  One cannot deny his effective use of silence, of pauses, of holding notes for just the right length of time.  There's a studied feel to his playing, but there's also a romantic feel.