Description
Manuel de Falla’s first instrument was the piano. The four landscapes in sound of the Cuatro piezas españolaspay tribute to the unsurpassable model of Isaac Albéniz. Starting out from the black-and-white keyboard, he imagined the colours of his orchestra – vivid, dry, crackling like an immense ensemble of timbral percussion. The ascetic precision of his musical thought is embodied in the Fantasía bætica, ruled by a murderous sun, but his creative imagination also reconstituted the neo-Baroque tone of El sombrero de tres picos in instrumental writing that harks back to Scarlatti. Yet this pianistic world is above all that that of Gypsy Andalusia. When the composer decided to make a digest for piano of the original version for small orchestra of El amor brujo that did not limit itself to the brio of the Ritual Fire Dance, the result was a genuinely theatrical piece, sublimating the whole culture of cante jondo, transporting the listener into the magic circle of flamenco, piano-guitar, piano-voice. Wilhem Latchoumia’s brilliant and profound playing illuminates every aspect of this immemorial and multiple Spain.
