FALLA: Piano Music Vol. 1

Ligorio, Daniel

8.555065

Though Manuel de Falla was to be the father of 20th century music in Spain and would be listed among today's popular composers, his fame does largely reside on two colourful ballets and the piano concerto, Nights in the Garden of Spain. For solo piano he was to compose just a handful of works, the major part of this disc given to pieces composed while he was still in his early twenties and predate his departure for Paris where his whole career took on a new lease of life.
Those early pieces - Nocturno, Serenata and the Serenata Andaluza - are simple salon pieces, the Allegro de Concierto from 1903 being his first work of any real merit, though it is clumsily written and hardly sufficient to point to a future composer of merit. But jump forward five years and the impact of Paris and Falla was completing the Cuatro Piezas Espanolas, the mix of Spanish rhythms and French Impressionism finding an immediate place in the piano repertoire. Then jump another twelve years for the first of two gratitude pieces to his French mentors, Debussy and Dukas, sombre and very beautiful. Finally to the composer's piano version of the popular ballet, Love the Magician, with the performer, Daniel Ligorio, having added some additional 'orchestral' colours. This is my first acquaintance with Ligorio, described in the booklet as 'one of the leading young pianists in Spain'.
There are few demands on his technique until we arrive at the ballet, but he obviously enjoys the music and offers a restrained view of the ballet. Certainly the contents of the disc are quite often recorded and are not as unique as the pre-release publicity would have us believe, but it is still very welcome. • David Denton, David's Review Corner, January 2007

CD

8.01.2007

747313506521