Granados,E. / Gonzalez,Pablo / Alvarez,Jesus - Granados: Orchestral Works 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Kreisler / Siqing / Taipei Chinese Orchestra / Yiu - Butterfly Lovers [SUPER-AUDIO CD] Hybrid SACD date 07/10/2015

GRANADOS, E. Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 - Suite sobre cantos gallegos / Torrijos (Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra, Gonzalez) - Although he is best known as the composer of some of the greatest masterpieces of Spanish piano music, Enrique Granados also wrote a much less well-known sequence of orchestral music. The cinematic Marcha de los vencidos evokes the painful trudging of 'the defeated' in an unspecified battle, while the incidental music for the play Torrijos demonstrates Granados's talent for lyrical writing and his love of the stage. The ambitious Suite sobre cantos gallegos uses Galician folk melodies and dance rhythms to reflect the landscapes of the region. This is the first recording in a series marking the centenary of Granados's death.

In the last of his three volume series devoted to Granados's orchestral music, two very different compositional strands are explored. The early Suite oriental reveals his sense of vivid orchestral color and melodic imagination, couched in the exotic language of the time. Written in a more pared-down style, the one-act Inchlyric poemInch Liliana, a collaboration with the writer Apelles Mestres, is a four-movement suite in which Granados conjures up a vivid, mythical world. Elisenda is another impressionistic score, both emotive and ethereal, here performed in it's arrangement for piano and chamber orchestra.