Release Date: 04 January 2005
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 747313280025
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: FALLA
Description
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)El amor brujo El sombrero de tres picosManuel de Falla is generally acknowledged as theleading figure in Spanish music of the twentieth century.Born in 1876 in Cadiz, as a boy he aspired to be a writerbut by the mid-1890s had decided to concentrate onmusic. To this end he studied in Madrid, his first worksbeing for the piano. Between 1900 and 1904, to earn aliving, he wrote six zarzuelas, the light operas popular inSpain. These were financially unrewarding but inMadrid he came under the influence of Felipe Pedrell(1841-1922), the great Catalan musicologist andcomposer. Pedrell inspired his students, among themAlbeniz and Granados, to appreciate the historictraditions of Spanish music, with emphasis on folkmusic,and their relevance to contemporarycomposition.In 1905 Falla won first prize with La vida breve(Life is Short) in a competition for Spanish operaawarded by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of SanFernando, but as no public performance for the workwas offered in Spain, he decided to seek better prospectsin Paris. There he met various leading composers of theera, including Albeniz, Debussy, Dukas, Ravel, andStravinsky. Several of his piano works and songs wereperformed, and La vida breve was eventually producedat the Casino Municipal in Nice in 1913, and repeated atthe Opera-Comique in Paris the following year.At the outbreak of World War I Falla returned toSpain, where he was winning a reputation. La vida brevewas performed on 14th November 1914 at the Teatro dela Zarzuela in Madrid, and Siete canciones popularesespanolas (Seven Spanish Folk-songs) a few weekslater, confirming his position as the foremostcontemporary Spanish composer. In April 1915, at theTeatro Lara in Madrid, came the premi?¿re of one of hisfinest masterpieces, the ballet with songs, El amor brujo(Love the Magician). This was followed by the firstperformance, in 1916, of Noches en los jardines deEspana (Nights in the Gardens of Spain), for piano andorchestra, and the success of another ballet, El sombrerode tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat), first performedin Madrid in 1917.In 1920 Falla moved to Granada. Here, with thepoet, Federico Garcia Lorca, he organized the famousCante jondo flamenco competition of 1922, an attempt,regrettably not repeated, to conserve and revive theancient art of Andalusian song. In Granada Fallacomposed El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter'sPuppet Show), an adaptation of various episodes fromCervantes's Don Quixote, Psyche, the Concerto forharpsichord or pianoforte, Soneto a Cordoba (for voiceand harp), and other works. His last completedcomposition was a set of four Homenajes (Homages) fororchestra, first performed in Buenos Aires in 1939,conducted by Falla himself. From 1927 until the end ofhis life, Falla worked on the cantata, Atlantida, amassively ambitious undertaking left unfinished buteventually completed by his eminent disciple, ErnestoHalffter (1905-1989), for its belated premi?¿re in 1961.Following the Spa
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Various
Various
Lully
