Clara Mouriz

Ruby Hughes, Clara Mouriz, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Juanjo Mena – Montsalvatge: Partita 1958, Cinco Cancione Negras, Calidoscopi simfònic & Simfonia de Rèquiem (2012/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:55 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

This album of orchestral works marks the centenary in 2012 of the birth of the Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge.

It is released as part of our Spanish music series, conducted by Juanjo Mena, a fellow Catalan national and Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic. Montsalvatge was one on the most influential musical figures in Catalan music during the latter half of the twentieth century. He explored virtually every musical form, but many of his most significant works, including Cinco Canciones Negras (Five Negro Songs), were written after his discovery of the art of the Antilles. He was fascinated by West Indian music, which, as he wrote, ‘was itself originally Spanish, exported to the Caribbean, and then re-imported’. In Cinco Canciones Negras for mezzo-soprano and orchestra he set a varied collection of poems from the Caribbean and Spain, adopting the captivating rhythms of the West Indies. ‘Canción de Cuna para Dormira a un Negrito’ can only be described as one of the tenderest lullabies in the repertoire, presenting a vivid contrast to the exhilarating display of rumba-like rhythms in ‘Canto Negro’.
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