Jordi Mas - Piano Music 4 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

A pupil of Pizzetti, the Italian composer, critic and pianist, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is today better known for his guitar works and film scores. From 1940 to 1956 he worked for various film studios in Hollywood, contributing to some 250 productions, and in 1946 he became an American citizen. These highly evocative and atmospheric piano works of his youth, which include depictions of flora and fauna, pastimes and the sea, suggest the lyricism of Pizzetti and the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel.

Padre Donostia's greatest achievement was to bring prestige to traditional Basque music. He succeeded in finding and conveying it's deeper significance, faithfully and elegantly, as well as in achieving the perfect balance between the assimilation of tradition and the huge influence of his impressionist contemporaries, Ravel and Debussy. At the core of his piano repertoire are the four books of Preludes (1912-16), to which must also be added the Menuet basque (Basque minuet), Andante para una sonata vasca (Andante for a Basque sonata), Herrimina (Nostalgia), Homenaje a J.C. de Arriaga (Tribute to Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga), Prière plaintive à Notre-Dame de Socorri (Heartfelt Prayer to Our Lady of Socorri), and two original pieces for guitar, Tiento y canción (Tiento and Song) and Vora'l Ter (On the Banks of the Ter). Common to the four books of Preludes is a concern for the strict reproduction of the traditional melodies, which are always allowed to shine through. Padre Donostia's expressive writing rises up above the melody, it's express intention being to describe the text, harmonic backgrounds representing landscapes, rhythmic patterns, impressionistic recitatives, distant music from religious processions and festivities, children's games, and so on, all of which are marked by their simplicity and nostalgic lyricism. Although the works were written within a short time of one another, the later pieces show that Padre Donostia's musical and harmonic idiom was beginning to move away from it's classical roots to become more impressionistic in nature.

In the first phase of the composer's career, his music for solo piano is represented by a relatively limited number of significant pieces. In contrast, one of the more obvious characteristics of recent works of Casablancas is the impressive quantity of piano compositions offered, as shown by the dates when pieces in the present catalogue were written. The maturity which characterizes his musical language has enabled him to achieve results influenced by the instrument's great literature but with an increasing virtuosity in the writing and extraordinary richness of textural detail in both harmonic and polyphonic elements, subject always to the piano's sonorities and natural dynamics as the final criteria of musical structure. The selection offered here brings together almost all the piano works of Benet Casablancas, it's earliest contribution being Preludi I Fuga En Do (Prelude and Fugue in C). This provides an interesting introduction to his work by presenting a very early piece which, despite the fact that it is enormously different from the composer's mature style, demonstrates in it's firm contrapuntal writing, his search for structural integrity and a concern for craftsmanship. How the musical personality of Casablancas would develop is perhaps revealed more clearly in the mild disquiet of the quasi-expressionistic Prelude rather than in the Fugue's neoclassicism (written somewhat in the style of Hindemith). But this study in polyphony already gives us insight into a young composer setting himself unusually high standards in the service of his profession.