Lola
Rodriguez de Aragon, soprano
Felix Lavilla, piano
(plus Fuensanta Sola (M. Sop.), and unnamed Cor Anglais
player)
Recorded
in April, 1954
Released as London/Ducretet-Thomson EL 93016
Download ID: 230276/399315
(Duration
28'08")
Play
sample movement:
Every so
often a recording comes along of which I have no preconceptions or ideas
and completely blows me away. Such a fabulous recording is this, though
I should admit to a pre-existing weakness for Spanish songs for female
voice with piano! If this music is unfamiliar to you I would recommend
you get to know it immediately, and in the hands of the great Spanish
soprano and teacher Lola Rodriguez de Aragon (1910-1984) there can be
few better ways of doing so.
Granados
(1867-1916) had set out to found a national school of Spanish music; in
his Goyescas, music for piano inspired by Goya, he succeeded in
capturing the flavour of the music of Madrid. Likewise the Tonadillas
"in ancient style" took their inspiration from Goya, in this
case scenes painted for the royal tapestries in Madrid.
The original
sleevenotes state: "The word 'Tonadilla' is derived from tonada,
a ballade tune of Castille; and the original tonadillas were intermezzos
for a few singers which became popular in the theatres of Madrid at the
beginning of the nineteenth century."
Each one
tells a short story about love, and is given a descriptive title, from
The Lover of Goya, addressed to Goya and his painting "The
young lover" to The discreet lover in which the girl is indifferent
to the ugliness of her lover so long as he shows great discretion to The
forgotten lover, in which the girl bewails that her lover has forgotten
her, we run through the seemingly endless variety of difficulties and
joys of young love.
It should
be noted that our source recording does not name the Cor anglais player
for the first La Maja dolorosa, and we have been thus far unable
to find any further information in this regard.
Download
our Illustrated Catalogue Complete
catalogue of recordings, fully indexed by composer and performer,
with links to website pages
Restoration
by Peter Harrison:
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