This disc is a lot of fun, even if the music is somewhat uneven in quality. The main offering, José Serebrier’s Partita (subtitled Symphony No. 2), dates from around 1960. It’s marvelous: brilliantly scored, Latin-influenced in a completely natural, kitsch-free way, and featuring a second movement funeral march that’ll blow your speakers apart if you’re not careful. You’ll love it. The Fantasia for strings is an orchestral arrangement of a string quartet, and it’s similarly full of bouncing rhythms and expressive tunes. I found less to hold my attention in the Sonata for solo violin simply because the medium seems somewhat out of place in an orchestral collection such as this one, but I have no doubt that the work will be of interest to violinists looking for something to do by themselves aside from Bach and Bartók. As for Winterreise, this late work is a sort of musical collage, paying homage to Haydn’s “Winter” from The Seasons, and well as to music from Glazunov’s ballet of the same title. It’s fluff, but highly entertaining fluff. As might be expected, the composer leads the London Philharmonic in smashing performances of the three orchestral works, Gonzolo Acosta masters the difficulties of the solo violin sonata with aplomb, and the recording is the last word in high fidelity.
