Beyond Classical

Read reviews, listen to the music, and purchase the CD FALLA: Popular Spanish Suite / Piano Pieces / Harpsichord Concerto

Customer Service Toll Free 866.489.4152

Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Narrow your search
with our Music Browser

Classical Music

        Ballet
        Chamber Music
        Choral
        Concertos
        Film Music
        Folk Legends
        Instrumental
        Musicals
        Opera / Operetta
        Orchestral
        Vocal

Jazz

Jazz Contemporary
Jazz Icons

New Age

Wind Band

World

        Ballad
        Bhuddist
        Chinese Music
        Classical (World)
        Early Music (World)
        Folk
        Gamelan
        Gypsy
        Hindustani
        Jazz (World)
        Klezmer
        Sufi
        Vocal (World)
        World

Special Offers:

Free MP3 Downloads

Catalogs

Internship Opportunities

Celebrating Black History

Grammy Winners on Sale

Masters of American Music

Valentine�s Day Special

Clearance

Penguin Guide

200 Essential Recordings

Recently Released

Upcoming Releases

SACD

DVD

        Ballet DVD
        Classical Concert
        Classical Documentary
        Dance Documentary
        Opera DVD
        Pop/Rock Concert

Audio Books

        Anthologies / Collections
        Arts
        Biographies
        Children's Classics
        Classic Fiction
        Great Epics and Tales
        History
        Junior Classic Fiction
        Junior History
        Literature
        Music Biographies
        Music Education
        Non-Fiction
        Philosophy
        Plays - Others
        Plays - Shakespeare
        Poetry
        Religion
        Samplers
        Sports
        Wine Guide

NaxosDirect Podcasts

Video Librarian Reviews

Labels

Naxos Label

        Naxos American Classics
        Naxos Best Of...
        Naxos Box Sets
        Naxos Cinema Classics
        Naxos Classics
        Naxos DVD
        Naxos DVD-Audio
        Naxos International
        Naxos Jazz
        Naxos Limited Edition
        Naxos Milken Archives
        Naxos Night Music
        Naxos Opera
        Naxos Orchestral
        Naxos Special Release
        Naxos Wind Band Classics
        Naxos World

Composers

Conductors

Ensembles

Orchestras

Choirs

Artists

Instruments

Producers

FALLA: Popular Spanish Suite / Piano Pieces / Harpsichord Concerto

Home

Classical Music

Concertos

FALLA: Popular Spanish Suite / Piano Pieces / Harpsichord Concerto

View large image

Total playing time: 00:55:35

$8.99 (CD)

In Stock - Usually ships within 24 hours.

Link to this CD Link to this page

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) Popular Spanish Suite for Violin and Piano Dance of the Corregidor from The Three-Cornered Hat for Solo Harp Two Dances from...

Read more about this recording

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)

Popular Spanish Suite for Violin and Piano

Dance of the Corregidor from The Three-Cornered Hat for Solo Harp

Two Dances from Love The Magician for Cello and Piano

Mazurka; Serenata; Cancion for Piano

Psyche for Soprano, Flute, Harp, Violin, Viola and Cello

Homage to Claude Debussy for Guitar

Soneto a Cordoba for Soprano and Harp

Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello

Manuel de Falla was born in Cadiz on 23rd November 1876, and died in Alta Gracia, Argentina on 14th November 1946. His early musical training in Cadiz was private and somewhat haphazard, and was concluded by two years of intensive study at the Real Conservatorio in Madrid in 1896-8; but like many Spanish composers of his generation he received his advanced musical education in Paris, where he lived from 1907 until 1914 and where he came to know Dukas (who described him affectionately as 'the little black Spaniard'), Debussy and Ravel. Most of the works by which his name is remembered were composed during the earlier part of his career: his opera La vida breve in 1904-5, his ballets El amor brujo and El sombrero de tres picos in 1914-16 and 1916-19, respectively, and his 'symphonic impressions' for piano and orchestra, Noches en Ios jardines de Espana in 1911-15. In 1920 he left Madrid and settled (with his faithful sister Maria del Carmen as housekeeper and amanuensis) in Granada, where, among other things, he organised a festival of cante jondo, the traditional song of Andalucia, and founded a chamber orchestra which became known as the 'Orquesta Betica da Camera' and whose conductor was his disciple, Ernesto Halffter. Falla's compositions of the 1920s and 1930s, though important, are conceived on a small scale, with the exception of the huge 'scenic cantata' Atlantida, which he began in December 1928 but never finished (it was completed after his death by Halffter). In October 1939 Falla and his sister sailed from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, and he was to spend the remaining six years of his life in Argentina, in poor health and comparative obscurity. His embalmed body was taken by sea to his birthplace, Cadiz, and was buried in the crypt of the cathedral.

The Siete canciones populares espanolas owe their inception to a request from a Spanish singer in the cast of La vida breve when it was produced in Paris in 1914, who wanted something Spanish for a projected recital. The songs were ready by the time Falla left Paris for Madrid in September that year and they were performed for the first time on 14th January 1915 at the Ateneo in Madrid by Luisa Vela and the composer. The transcription of six of them (omitting Seguidilla murciana) was made, as Suite populaire espagnole, by the Polish violinist Pawel Kochaiski. El pano moruno ('The Moorish cloth') comes from Murcia; Nana, a gentle lullaby, and the fiery Polo from Andalucia; the sad Asturiana from The Asturias (modem Oviedo); and the dashing Jota from Aragon; the origin of Cancion, a bitter-sweet love-song, is uncertain. All are, in the words of Ronald Crichton, 'intensely imaginative re creations' by Falla.

El sombrero de tres picos, a short novel by Pedro de Alarcon (1833-91) about a magistrate (corregidor), whose symbol of office is a three-cornered hat, a tricorne, who tries to seduce a miller's wife (molinera), only to become the laughing-stock of the town, had been set as an opera (Der Corregidor) by Hugo Wolf in 1895. Falla had been interested in making a musical setting as early as 1904, but because Alarcon's heirs refused their permission had set La vida breve instead. In 1916 the impresario Sergey Dyagilev was in Spain with part of his Ballets Russes and invited Falla to collaborate with them. Dyagilev suggested adapting Nocbes, but Falla demurred and proposed Sombrero. Dyagilev agreed to the piece being tried out as a mime-play by Falla's dramatist friend Gregorio Martinez Sierra, with accompaniment by Falla for small ensemble. The result was a farsa mimica in two scenes, entitled El corregidor y la molinera, which was produced on 7th April 1917 at the Teatro Eslava in Madrid under Joaquin Turina. After Dyagilev had suggested a few modifications Falla expanded it into a full-scale ballet, re-scored it for full orchestra and restored Alarcon's own title. In this form it was staged for the first time, as The Three-Cornered Hat, on 22nd July 1919 in the aptly-named Alhambra Theatre in London, by the Ballets Russes under Ernest Ansermet, with choreography by Leonide Massine (who also played the miller) and sets and costumes by Picasso. The ballet was produced at the Opera in Paris on 23rd January 1920, as Le Tricorne. The formal, old�-fashioned Dance of the Corregidor, played here in a transcription for harp by David Watkins, comes from the second scene.

El amor brujo ('Love the Magician') was composed between November 1914 and April 1915, at the instigation of the gypsy singer and dancer Pastora Imperio, who asked Falla and Sierra for 'a dance and a song'. The original version, scored for mezzo-soprano and small instrumental ensemble, was given for the first time on 15th April 1915 by Imperio and her company under Moreno Ballesteros, at the Teatro Lara in Madrid, but it was not a success. The Press actually criticised the score for its lack of Spanish character; an astonishing assertion when one considers that, although no folk tunes as such are used in it, the music was radically influenced by the Andalusian soleares, seguiiriyas, polos and martinetes which Rosario la Mejorana, Pastora's mother, had sung to Falla. Other performances followed in Barcelona, but in 1916 Falla re-scored it for a normal theatre orchestra (but with an important piano part), in which form it received successful concert performances (with and without the songs) in Madrid. This revised version was staged for the first time on 22nd May 1925, when the ballet was produced at the Trianon-Lyrique Theatre in Paris, with the composer conducting Spectacles Beriza. The scene is a gypsy camp Candelas is in love with Carmelo, but is haunted by the ghost of her dead lover, a dissolute but fascinating gypsy whose memory threatens her hopes of finding happiness with Carmelo. Pantomima portrays a dance by Candelas' friend Lucia, in an attempt to distract the ghost's attention from Candelas so that she and Candelo can embrace and break the spell.

The dance itself is a seductive Cadiz tango in 7/8, begun, in the ballet, by the orchestra's principal cello; it is prefaced by a dramatic reference to the ghost's theme and followed by a coda which suggests that the spell is beginning to weaken. Cancion is the 'Song of love's sorrow', in which Candelas expresses her frustration in cante jondo style. Both excerpts are played here in transcriptions for cello and piano by Charles Schiff.

When Falla completed his studies at the Conservatorio in Madrid he was a fully fledged virtuoso pianist, but his major compositions for the instrument, Noches and the Fantasia baetica, came some twenty years later. Among his earliest piano works are unpretentious salon pieces such as the Mazurka, the Serenata and the Cancion, which were written in 1899-1900 and published a year or two later.

Falla met the French writer Georges Jean-Aubry in Paris in 1910, and the association continued after Jean-Aubry moved to London in 1915 and when he edited The Chesterian (the house magazine of Falla's English publishers) from 1919 to 1930. His setting of Jean-Aubry's elegant conceit, addressed to the tearful Psyche, abandoned by Cupid, dates from 1924 and was first performed in December that year in Barcelona, by Conchita Badia. Falla imagined, as a setting for psyche, a court concert in the tower chamber in the Alhambra known as the Tocador de la Reina (the Queen's Boudoir), during the visit to Granada in 1730 of Philip V of Spain with his Qneen, Elisabeth Farnese. The addition of flute and harp to the accompanying string trio adds to the French flavonr of the piece, but, as the admirable Crichton observed, 'the slow saraband rhythm brings a hint of Spanish ceremonial'.

Debussy, whose physical experience of Spain was limited to a single day in San Sebastian, just over the French border, but whose feeling for the country was so intuitive that Falla hailed Iberia and La soiree dans Grenade as an example of all that Debussy was able to teach the composers of Spain about a more civilised use of their own folk-music, died in Paris on 25th March 1918, aged fifty-five. A special issue of La Revue Musicale, issued in December 1920, was devoted to him. Falla contributed to it an article on 'Debussy and Spain' as well as a piece for its musical supplement, 'Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy', which also included contributions from Bartok, Dukas, Goossens, Malipiero, Ravel, Roussel, Satie, Schmitt and Stravinsky. Bearing in mind a request from the Catalan guitarist Miguel Llobet for a work for his instrument, Falla wrote his Homenaje 'Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy' for guitar, inscribing it 'Granada viii 1920'. He sent the music to Llobet, who must have performed it in Barcelona that autumn. The official premi�re, however, was given on the 24th January 1921 at the Salle des Agricultures in Paris, by Marie-Louise Casadesus on the 'harp-lute'. In Falla's grave and dignified elegy there are allusions to Iberia and, shortly before the end, quotations from La soiree dans Grenade; in September 1920 he made a version for piano, and later orchestrated it as the second movement of the suite Homenajes (1920-38), which also paid tribute to Enrique Arbos, Dukas and Felipe Pedrell.

In 1927 a group of young Spanish poets decided to celebrate the tercentenary of the death of the great poet Luis de Gongora, and they persuaded Falla (who initially made no secret of the fact that he found Gongora's style frigid and precious) to set some of his verse to music. The result was Soneto a Cordoba, a declamatory setting for soprano and harp (or piano), of a poem in praise of that great city, which was given its first performance on 14th May at the Salle Pleyel in Paris by Madeleine Gresle and Mme Wurmser-Delcourt.

Falla's friend and English biographer J.B. Trend said that the Soneto 'should be declaimed through a brazen trumpet by a colossal marble angel on the fa�ade of a baroque cathedral' and that Falla's setting 'could only be completely convincing if it were sung by someone who could imagine herself to have, for a moment, the position and attributes of a baroque angel'.

Falla included an important harpsichord part in his one-act puppet opera El retablo de Maese Pedro (1919-22), and in 1923 began work on a miniature concerto for the instrument, though this was not completed until 1926. It was dedicated to Wanda

Landowska, who gave the first performance (with Falla himself conducting) on 5th November 1926 at the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona. In a preface in the score the composer emphasised that the harpsichord should be as sonorous as possible (he obviously conceived the work in terms of the big Pleyel instruments favoured by Landowska), and that for most of the time it should be played with all the stops 'on'; he also stressed the fact that the string parts were for solo players, and that on no account should they be doubled The obvious model, in the two brisk outer movements, was Domenico Scarlatti, who spent the last thirty years or so of his life in Spain, and whose harpsichord sonatas bear so many signs of the influence of Spanish music. The first movement also quotes (about two-thirds of the way through, on violin and cello in octaves) the tune of a villancico, 'De los alamos vengo, madre', by the sixteenth-century composer Juan Vasquez, and is notable for some polytonal features; the jocular, incisive finale has the rhythmic character of a jota. They are separated by an impressive and colourful Lento, partly rhapsodical and partly processional, in which Falla takes full advantage of the harpsichord's aptitude for brilliant arpeggiated flourishes and massive spread chords.

Disc 1

Popular Spanish Suite for Violin and Piano (tr. Paul Kochanski)

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Elizabeth Sellars, violin
Len Vorster, piano
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

El Pano moruno - 1:59
Nana - 2:12
Cancion - 1:28
Polo - 1:23
Asturiana - 2:34
Jota - 2:49

The Three Cornered Hat: Dance of the Corregidor for Solo Harp (tr. David Watkins)

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

Dance of the Corregidor - 2:32

Love the Magician: Two Dances for Cello and Piano (tr. Charles Schiff)

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Len Vorster, piano
Rosanne Hunt, cello
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

Pantomima, Cancion - 5:41

Mazurka

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Len Vorster, piano
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

Mazurka - 5:01

Serenata

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Len Vorster, piano
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

Serenata - 3:55

Cancion

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Len Vorster, piano
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

Cancion - 1:53

Psyche

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Merlyn Qualife, soprano
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

Psyche - 5:16

Homage to Claude Debussy

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

Homage to Claude Debussy - 3:10

Soneto a Cordoba

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Merlyn Qualife, soprano
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

Soneto a Cordoba - 2:45

Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello

(more info)

Composed by: Manuel de Falla
Conducted by: Brett Kelly
Elizabeth Anderson, harpsichord
Recording date: 24-26, 28 September 1997
Produced by: Atkinson, Michael

Allegro - 3:16
Lento (giubiloso ed energico) - 5:28
Vivace (flessibile, scherzando) - 4:13

Reviews

Be the first to review this title

FREE SHIPPING on orders
of 5 items or more!

Earn Naxos Rewards Points by opening an account and buying your favorite music today! Create your account here.

See all of our great site features here.

Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Composer(s):
Falla, Manuel de

Conductor(s):
Kelly, Brett

Artist(s):
Anderson, Elizabeth; Hunt, Rosanne; Qualife, Merlyn; Sellars, Elizabeth; Vorster, Len

Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 636943436622
Item Number: 8554366
Release Date: Jun 17, 1998