Anyone who loves Spanish music will tell you that it’s a constant source of frustration that there aren’t more orchestral scores by the great 19th and 20th century Romantic nationalist composers. Albeniz wrote practically nothing for orchestra (and wasn’t very good at it anyway), Falla spend most of his life polishing the same half-dozen works, and Granados drowned before doing anything major symphonically, leaving only Turina to carry the ball. For years it seemed as though all we would ever hear of this particular master would be the Danzas fantasticas, Sinfonia Sevillana, and the ubiquitous La oración del torero. Then Antonio de Almeida recorded a spectacular all-Turina CD for RCA that offered the rarely-performed Ritmos as well as some other, more popular tone poems. Claves weighed in with additional pieces orchestrated by the composer from piano works, and now ASV continues this journey of discovery with another excellent version of Ritmos, the lovely tone poem Evangelio, and a recording premiere: El Castillo de Almodóvar, another of Turina’s gorgeous orchestrations of a piano original. So although you may have to hunt around for it, virtually all of Turina’s symphonic output is now available in excellent modern performances. Only his largest masterpiece, the magnificent Canto a Sevilla (a sort of Spanish Das Lied von der Erde) is missing. So if you love Spanish music, by all means pick up this wonderfully played and recorded disc. It’s a treasure. [11/26/1999]
