Turina: Sinfonia Sevilliana / Danzas Fantasticas / Ritmos

Description

Joaquín Turina (1882-1949)Sinfonía sevillana • Danzas fantásticas • Ritmos • La procesión del RocíoThe second generation of Spanish nationalist composers, following the example of Albéniz and Granados, had two principal figures, Falla and Turina, often seen as opposites, when it would be much better to understand them as complementary. Actually their interpretation of nationalism was very different; they both spent time in Paris, the cultural melting-pot of the period, but Turina was to accomplish a body of work that was much more rooted in formal traditions, with full attention, for example, to chamber music, while Falla explored freer paths. Joaquín Turina was born in Seville on 9th December 1882. His first musical studies were in the Andalusian capital with García Torres (harmony and counterpoint) and Enrique Rodríguez (piano), and in Madrid with José Tragó. His long stay in Paris, from 1905 to 1914, was decisive in his education. There he continued his piano apprenticeship with Moszkowski and studied composition with d’Indy. This was a time for the absorption of influences and for human contacts, since Turina then began his friendship with Debussy, Ravel and Florent Schmitt. His first works had a certain modernist tendency, but the advice of Albéniz encouraged him to have recourse to Andalusian popular sources. This tendency can already be seen in his Suite Sevilla of 1908, for piano, and particularly in his String Quartet of 1910, in which he made use of the sonorities of the guitar. Already before he had ended his period in Paris, Turina was known in Madrid with the performance of La procesión del Rocío, conducted by Enrique Fernández Arbós, the success of which, followed immediately by performance in Paris, brought recognition throughout Europe. On his return to Spain he introduced to the public many of his works, as a conductor, and in 1921 won a prize in San Sebastián for his Sinfonía sevillana. This was not to be his only award, since in 1926 he was awarded the important National Music Prize for his Piano Trio No.1. No less significant was the prestige he acquired with the première of his opera Jardín de Oriente at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 1923 and only staged again more than fifty years later. From 1926 he served as music critic for the periodical El Debate, and, in the field of education, he carried out a thorough reform as professor of composition at the Madrid Conservatory. All these activities did not take him away from composition, and he continually added to his piano compositions, himself a very gifted pianist, with works such as the 1930 Danzas gitanas (Gypsy Dances), in 1935 Mujeres de Sevilla (Women of Seville), and Poema fantástico in 1944, and to chamber music in 1933 with his second Trio and in 1942 with Las musas de Andalucía. Turina died in Ma