Falla: La Vida Breve

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Cat No: 8660155

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Release Date: 01 January 2004

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099615525

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: FALLA

Description
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)La vida breveManuel de Falla is universally acknowledged as the centralpersonality of twentieth-century Spanish musical culture. Born in 1876 inCadiz, Andalusia, he aspired as a young boy to be a writer but by the mid-1890shad decided to concentrate on music. To further his ambition of becoming acomposer he studied in Madrid, his first works being for the piano. Between1900 and 1904, seeking to earn a living, he wrote six zarzuelas, the lightoperas popular in Spain. These were financially unrewarding but in Madrid,Falla came under what he described as the 'complex revitalizing influence' ofFelipe Pedrell (1841-1922), the great Catalan musicologist and composer.Pedrell inspired his students (among them Albeniz and Granados), to appreciatethe historic traditions of Spanish music, with emphasis on folk elements andrelevance to contemporary composition. In 1905 Falla won first prize with La vida breve (Life isShort) in a competition for Spanish opera awarded by the Royal Academy of FineArts of San Fernando, but, as no public performance for the work was offered inSpain, he decided to seek better prospects in Paris. In the bracing culturalatmosphere of the French capital, he became friends with various leadingcomposers of the era, such as Albeniz, Debussy, Dukas, Ravel and Stravinsky. Aswell as receiving performances of several of his piano works and songs, La vidabreve was eventually produced at the Casino Municipal, Nice, in 1913, andrepeated at the Opera-Comique in Paris the following year. After returning to Spain at the outbreak of World War I,Falla's reputation was rapidly in the ascendant in his native land.Performances of La vida breve (14th November 1914, at the Teatro de laZarzuela, Madrid), and Siete canciones populares espanolas (Seven SpanishFolksongs), a few weeks later, confirmed his status among critics and public asthe foremost contemporary Spanish composer. In April 1915, at the Teatro Larain Madrid, came the premi?¿re of one of his finest masterpieces, the ballet withsongs, El amor brujo (Love the Magician). This was followed by the firstperformance (1916) of Noches en los jardines de Espana (Nights in the Gardensof Spain), for piano and orchestra, and the illustrious success of anotherballet, El sombrero de tres picos(The Three-Cornered Hat), first given in Madrid in 1917. In 1920 Falla moved to Granada. Here, with the poet,Federico Garcia Lorca, he organized the renowned Cante jondo flamencocompetition of 1922, an attempt, regrettably not repeated, to conserve andrevive the ancient art of Andalusian song. In Granada, Falla composed Elretablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show, an adaptation of variousepisodes from Cervantes's Don Quixote), Psyche, the Concerto for harpsichord orpianoforte, Soneto a Cordoba (for voice and harp) and other works. His lastcompleted composition was a set of four Homenajes (Homages) for orchestra,first performed in Buenos Aires in 1939, conducted by Falla himself
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