Guridi: Piano Works

Victoria Aja

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Cat No: 8557633

Release Date: 01 June 2005

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313263325

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: GURIDI

Description
Jes??s Guridi (1886-1961)Piano MusicAlthough Jes??s Guridi achieved his greatest successes inthe orchestral and operatic fields, he also wrote asignificant quantity of piano works. While his activity inthis area was intermittent, his piano compositions arenonetheless a true reflection of his personal style, beingcharacterized by everything from grand operaticgestures to the most subtle effects, as well as beingstrongly influenced by folk-music.Guridi was born in Vitoria in 1886. Having madesome early appearances in the musical circles of Bilbao,he left Spain in 1904 to continue his studies in Paris,Li?¿ge and Cologne. On his return he was appointeddirector of the Bilbao Choral Society, for whom hewrote a number of works, most notably the collectionsof Basque folk-songs and one of his masterpieces, Asicantan los chicos (1915), for chorus and orchestra. Thenext year or so saw the first performances in Madrid ofhis \Basque operatic idyll Mirentxu (1915) and thesymphonic poem Una aventura de Don Quijote (1916).He worked on his epic Basque opera Amaya over thedecade from 1910 to 1920, and another of his stageworks, the zarzuela El caserio (1926), proved to be oneof his greatest triumphs. This was followed by otherworks in the same genre, including La meiga and Lacautiva.Guridi achieved particular international renownwith the Diez melodias vascas (1941), a fine example ofa nationalist orchestral work, the Sinfonia pirenaica(1946), the Homenaje a Walt Disney (1956) for pianoand orchestra, the String Quartet in A (1950), and theSeis canciones castellanas (1943), among others. Aswell as composing many highly regarded pieces fororgan, including the Triptico del Buen Pastor, he alsowrote a number of film scores and composed incidentalmusic for the theatre. Organ professor of the MadridConservatory for some years, Guridi was appointed itsdirector in 1956, remaining in the post until his deathfive years later, by which time he had been distinguishedwith many awards and honours.Guridi's piano works range from brief personalsketches to large-scale fantasies for piano and orchestra.His usual way of working was to create cycles ofindependent pieces, generally based on Basque folkmusic,limiting himself to a number of very specificstylistic parameters, overall austerity and idiomatic oratmospheric changes according to the character, poetic,festive or dramatic, of the original melody.There are certain similarities between the way heuses folk-song elements in the Cantos populares vascos(Basque Folk-Songs) and in his choral song collections.The melodic lines are almost vocal in nature, and Guridirestricts his use of pianistic formulas such as arpeggios,repeated chords and changes in register. The harmoniccolour is determined by a typical, essentially diatoniclanguage, which constricts the sound-world of thispiece. Similar characteristics appear in the Ocho apuntes(Eight Sketches), two-part imitative procedures, andharmonizations inspired by eighteenth-century keyboard
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