Pablo Sainz - Guitar Recital
Turina · Moreno Torroba · Rodrigo · Segovia · Falla ·
Gerhard · Tarrega
The composers included here represent the interaction of
modernism and romantic nationalism current in Spain during the first half of
the twentieth century. How Spanish composers dealt with integrating the
inherited musical wealth of their country's popular tradition with the infusion
of new concepts of musical thought in Europe at the time is in itself
revealing, contributing, in part, to the power of the music.
Joaquin Turina (1882-1949) contributed a small but
significant body of pieces to the guitar repertoire. A friend of Manuel de
Falla and student of Vincent d'Indy in Paris, he began his career with a Piano
Quintet (1907) influenced by his Parisian studies. The style of that work soon
gave way to an exploration of the potentialities of Spanish folk-music,
especially flamenco. This re-invigorated the harmony and rhythm of his music
even as he maintained an affinity for cyclical and classical forms. The two
works here included are Sevillana (Fantasia), Op. 29, (1923) and Homenaje a
Tarrega, Op. 69, (1932). These are the first and last pieces written for guitar
by Turina, both directly inspired by flamenco music. Sevillana begins with a
strong, dramatic gesture, somewhat rough and crude, as if a field worker
applied his dirty, calloused hands to the guitar. His fingers, tense from work,
are incapable of independent movement, so he slides his gnarled fist around the
fingerboard creating striking, expressive dissonances. The music soon evokes
flamenco singing. The Homenaje a Tarrega consists of two movements, a garrotin
and soleares. The work is nominally a hommage to the great Spanish guitarist
Francisco Tarrega (1852-1909), but is, perhaps, an unwitting acknowledgment of
Tarrega's teacher, Julian Arcas.
The Sonata-Fantasia by Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982)
was found among Segovia's manuscripts in May, 2001, by the great Italian
musician, Angelo Gilardino, and has been published by Berben Edizioni Musicali.
Torroba's many solo guitar works consist mainly of short, descriptive pieces,
often published in collections. This piece, a full- fledged sonata, is among
Torroba's most ambitious and masterful works. We can only venture to guess why
Segovia never performed it, as it is clearly to his taste. Be that as it may,
we are fortunate to have available a major contribution to guitar repertoire
and to twentieth-century Spanish guitar sonatas in general, a collection that
includes sonatas by Turina, Jose, Manen, and Espla. Torroba's music is firmly
rooted in Spanish nationalism with elements of impressionism occasionally
present, such as the use of modes, parallelism, extended chords and a general
appreciation of colour. Those who know Torroba's work will be struck by the
opening sonorities of the introduction, sonorities which lead, by way of an
arpeggiated altered chord, to a passage of fourths and fifths, horns and
trumpets signaling to the listener the sonata's first theme. Throughout the
course of the piece, Pablo Sainz Villegas chooses to finger many passages of
this sonata campanelas, in imitation of the piano's sustaining pedal, thus
allowing for the blurring effect of the French Impressionists. The second
movement, a short intermezzo, is followed by the finale, a conventional Rondo.
Also included are two movements from Torroba's Castillos de Espana, the
lullaby, Sigüenza (La infantina duerma) and Torija (Elegia). The Suite
Castellana consists of three movements, Fandanguillo, a setting of a Spanish
popular song, the expressive Arada with its colourful harmony and indecisive
melodic turns, and Danza. This last movement of the suite was the first piece
that Torroba ever wrote for the guitar in 1920 .
Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-1999) lived a long, productive life
and holds a place in the cultural life of Spain alongside Manuel de Falla. His
music was influenced by the neo-classicism of Stravinsky and the colourful
orchestration of Ravel. In addition, Rodrigo had a penchant for sharp
dissonances that can be explained as bi-tonal, but this was often a colouristic
device, sometimes used for humorous or sardonic effect. The two pieces here are
among the best solo guitar works of Rodrigo. The first is the brief En los
trigales (In the Wheat Fields), the outer sections of which have a most
infectious rhythmic lilt. The middle section is a strange, quizzical march interrupted
by syncopated harmonics and quartal harmonies. Invocacion y Danza is a great
work, a hommage to Manuel de Falla. Rodrigo cleverly quotes El amor brujo in
the opening measures by simply placing the pitches of Falla's tune on the first
and last notes of each measure and interpolating four notes in between. The
tune is so stretched out as to be barely recognisable. Rodrigo quotes other
works of Falla as well in loving tribute to his mentor.
Along with performers such as Artur Schnabel and Pablo
Casals, Andres Segovia, too, composed music, Segovia, perhaps, more modestly.
His work 5 Anecdotas, published by Guitar Review in New York in 1947, is almost
unknown, even though guitarists have taken up several Segovia compositions,
most notably, the beautiful Estudio sin luz. This collection of little pieces
is highly successful. If one takes the title as seriously as all titles should
be, there is more here than meets the ear. In fact, Segovia uses the direction
humoristico a few times and the music vaguely recalls, at least to the author
of these notes, Strauss's Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche. This music is
quintessentially that of a great performer, one who composes on the side, his
music full of familiar musical gestures set expertly on his instrument, in this
case, with enough originality to invite investigation.
The Homenaje, pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy of Manuel de
Falla (1876-1946) stands unequivocally among the masterpieces of the twentieth
century. Written in 1920, it also stands squarely among Falla's neo-classical
works, evoking the dedicatory tombeau genre as practiced by Baroque lutenists
and guitarists. A concise work of just about three minutes duration, the work
was written for an issue of the Paris Revue dedicated to the memory of the
recently deceased Claude Debussy (1863-1918). In this work Falla combines a
habanera dance rhythm with a sighing, plaintive F-E pitch motif demonstrating
the duality of the corporal and the spiritual. Falla quotes Debussy's piano
piece Soiree dans Grenade near the end, the pitches of which transubstantiate
into Debussy's final breaths.
Spiritual tension is nowhere more apparent than in the
figure of Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970). Born in Spain of Alsatian and
German-Swiss parentage, Gerhard identified himself as Catalan. A student of
Granados and Felipe Pedrell, he later became a student of, and an assistant to,
Arnold Schoenberg. Among Gerhard's early activities was transcribing folk-songs
from gramophone records, following the example of Bartok. Later he embraced
twelve-tone techniques and wrote pioneering electronic music. His Fantasia
(1957) is a small masterpiece, written as an interlude for his set of songs,
Cantares. In the Fantasia, Gerhard adroitly uses the symmetrical octatonic
scale, exploiting the scale's potential to mimic that most Spanish of scales,
the Phrygian mode. In addition, he mines the scale's bi-tonal possibilities.
The music juxtaposes two contrasting sections, one lyrical and melodic,
featuring arpeggiated chords supporting diaphanous harmonics, the other,
enormously rhythmic and propulsive. The transitions to and from the sections
are gauged with utter mastery of form.
The final work included is the miniature Maria - gavota by
Francisco Tarrega (1852-1909), who is often described as the father of the
modern classical guitar, thus bringing the short anthology full circle.
Mark Delpriora