Xalapa Symphony Orchestra / Lanfranco Marcelletti ROBERTO SIERRA Cantares - Loíza - Triple Concierto

CANTARES - LOÍZA - TRIPLE CONCIERTO

Xianji Liu LATIN GUITAR SONATAS

When Xianji Liu became the first Chinese-born winner of the prestigious Francisco Tárrega International Guitar Competition in 2016, a new star emerged in the world of the classical guitar.

Latin sonatas is a journey through the popular music of Brazil, Cuba and Puerto Rico, its rhythms, harmonies and colours, in a contemporary language breathing new life into the old form.

Silvia Márquez CHACONNERIE

Chaconnerie is a recording that deals with repetition. Chaconnerie illustrates that particular principle of Art that seeks to combine elements over and over again to achieve balance and unity. Chaconnerie encourages us to undertake a voyage in which sounds –through the centuries– build upon an insistently repeated, or imaginatively varied, scheme. Repetition has been a major element of humankind’s artistic manifestations and expressions ever since the time of the moais on Easter Island up to the drawings of Max C. Escher. Repetition is rhythm, pulse, and life, and life overflows in the chaconne, a dance whose origin Lope de Vega attributed to the American Indian (“from the Indies to Seville / it has come by post”) and whose character Miguel de Cervantes describes as lascivious and immoral. With its accent on the second beat and its variations on a harmonic scheme, this dancing base – together with sarabandes, folias, and passacaglias – was conducive to improvisation on chordal progressions, a novelty that had a crucial impact on Baroque music in Europe.

Manuel Barrueco / Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia / Víctor Pablo Pérez CONCIERTO BARROCO

Here are five excellent works for guitar and orchestra. The longest are the pair by Roberto Sierra (b. 1953), each a few seconds over 13 minutes. Folías is a modern set of variations on that tune most of us first met in Corelli’s variations (La folia). Concierto barroco combines Afro-Cuban and Baroque elements. It also contains some modern dissonances or polytonalities along with its neo-Baroque passages. Folías sounds rather like Richard Strauss combined with Manuel de Falla and seasoned with a dash of Joaquín Rodrigo. Sierra’s pieces begin and end the concert, while Vivaldi’s typically vigorous—and genuinely Baroque—concertos are second and fourth on the disc. Arvo Pärt’s mesmerizing Fratres serves as centerpiece.
Pärt wrote Fratres for violin, string orchestra, and percussion, but suggested this arrangement when Manuel Barrueco approached him about writing a work for guitar. I have compared the guitar version with the original on a Deutsche Grammophon disc with violinist Gil Shaham, conductor Neeme Järvi, and the Gothenburg Symphony; either version holds my attention very well indeed.
As expected, Barrueco plays splendidly, and so does the Symphony Orchestra of Galicia, based in La Coruña—yet another provincial band capable of world-class performance. Koch delivers deliciously warm and vivid sound. This disc will be high on my list of potential holiday presents. (Robert McColley, FANFARE)