Although Ernesto Halffter's modest yet well-crafted piano output is best sampled in small doses, it's useful to have it bundled together in one release. There's little I can add to David Hurwitz's succinct comments about the music itself in his review of Adam Kent's complete Halffter cycle on Bridge (type Q4639 in Search Reviews). Guillermo González's Naxos cycle actually is "completer" than complete, and spills over onto a second disc. Disc 1 contains all of Halffter's original piano works, while Disc 2 features piano arrangements of the entire ballet Sonatina, Pasodoble, Panaderos, and Boleras de la Cachucha, plus the tiny Tres piezas infantiles for piano duet. For the record, González omits El Cuco, a work Halffter wrote when he was six that Kent transcribed from the elderly composer's own performance on tape.

In the main, González's performances are a shade slower and are more generalized in detail than Kent's leaner, more incisive, rhythmically taut traversals. This particularly holds true for dance pieces such as Marche Joyeuse and L'espagnolade. Kent also imbues the three late Homages (works that González premiered) with a lighter, more fluid touch. However, González's hotheaded, impulsive dynamic surges vivify the two Sonatas quite differently than does Kent's buttoned-down, carefully thought-out fingerwork. Naxos' bright, slightly twangy sonics (more amplitude in the bass would have helped) suit the music well enough. [10/9/2007]

--Jed Distler