10 minute read
ISABEL LEONARD & PABLO SÁINZ-VILLEGAS
PRELUDE 6:30 PM
Lecture by musicologist to be announced.
Co-presented with San Diego Opera
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2022 · 7:30 PM
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman. ALBENIZ Asturias from Suite espagnole, Opus 47 (1860-1909) Pablo Sáinz-Villegas, guitar DE FALLA 7 Canciones Populares Españolass (1876-1946) El paño moruno Seguidilla murciana Jota Nana Canción Polo RODRIGO Aranjuez, ma pensée
(1901-1999) BARRERA Adiós Granada
(1870-1938) BONFÁ
(1922-2001) Manhã de Carnaval
CARRILLO Sabor a mí
(1921-1969) GARDEL El día que me quieras
(1890-1935) TÁRREGA Recuerdos de la Alhambra (1852-1909) Pablo Sáinz-Villegas, guitar GARCÍA LORCA Canciones Españolas Antiguas
(1898-1936) LARA Granada (1897-1970) Isabel Leonard, voice; Pablo Sáinz-Villegas, guitar
Born May 29, 1860, Camprodón, Lérida Died May 18, 1909, Campô-les-Bains Composed: 1882-89 Approximate Duration: 7 minutes
Isaac Albéniz was one of the greatest pianists of his generation, but he only found himself as a composer when he began to make use of Spanish material in his own music. He composed four of the eight movements that make up the Suite espagnole in 1886, then completed the others over the following several years. Each of the eight movements depicts or was inspired by a particular place in Spain (the final movement, a nocturne titled Cuba, is the one geographical exception). Though Albeniz published these eight movements as a set, individual movements have become famous on their own and are often played separately.
It is a curious fact that many of Albeniz’s pieces for piano work particularly well on the guitar, and in this recital we hear a movement from the Suite espagnole in an arrangement for guitar. Asturias, which has the feel of a perpetual-motion, is subtitled Leyenda (“legend”). 7 Canciones Populares Españolas MANUEL DE FALLA
Born November 23, 1876, Cadiz Died November 14, 1946, Alta Grazia, Argentina Composed: 1914 Approximate Duration: 14 minutes
Falla had moved from Madrid to Paris in 1907, but returned to Spain at the beginning of World War I. His Seven Popular Spanish Songs, completed in Paris in 1914, was the final work he composed before his departure, and it comes from a period of unusual creativity: El Amor Brujo would follow in 1915 and Nights in the Gardens of Spain in 1916. In arranging the collection of songs, Falla took the unaccompanied melodic line of seven Spanish popular or folk songs and harmonized them himself, occasionally rewriting or expanding the original melodic line to suit his own purposes. Several years later the Polish violinist Paul Kochanski arranged six of the songs (with the approval of the composer) for violin and piano under the title Suite Populaire Espagnole, and the work has become more familiar in this version than in the original. This recital offers the rare opportunity to hear Falla’s original settings.
The first two songs both come from the province of Murcia in southeast Spain. El paño moruno or “The Moorish Cloth” (Allegretto vivace) is based exactly on the famous song, while Seguidilla murciana is built on repeated phrases and quick harmonic shifts. Asturiana (Andante tranquillo) is a grieving tune from Asturia, a province in the northwest part of Spain; the vocal line floats above a quiet sixteenthnote accompaniment. Jota (Allegro vivo) has become the best known of the seven songs. A jota is a dance in triple time from the Aragon region of northern Spain, sometimes accompanied by castañets. Slow sections alternate with fast here, and the accompaniment imitates the sound of castañets. Nana (Calmo e sostenuto) is an arrangement of a wistful old Andalusian cradle song; Falla said that hearing this melody sung to him by his mother was his earliest memory. Canción (Allegretto) is a subdued love song that repeats one theme continuously. A polo is a specific form: an Andalusian folksong or dance in 3/8 time, sometimes with coloratura outbursts and explosive intrusions from the guitar. This particular Polo (Vivo), while based on Andalusian elements, is largely Falla’s own composition.
Aranjuez, ma pensée JOAQUIN RODRIGO
Born November 22, 1901, Sagunto Died July 6, 1999, Madrid Composed: 1939 Approximate Duration: 7 minutes
Listeners will immediately recognize this piece as an arrangement for voice and guitar of the slow movement of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, originally composed in 1939. Many years later, the composer’s wife, Victoria Kamhi, said that the original Adagio was inspired by happy memories of their honeymoon, combined with the composer’s anguish over the miscarriage of their first child. In the concerto, the haunting main theme of this movement is sung by the English horn as the guitar soloist accompanies.
That slow movement proved quite popular, and—to Rodrigo’s fury—it was soon used as the basis for jazz arrangements by Miles Davis and others. Rodrigo was unable to prevent these arrangements, and in 1968 he went ahead and arranged the Adagio under the title Aranjuez, ma pensée (“Aranjuez, My Thought”). Rodrigo made several different arrangements: for solo guitar, for guitar duo, for voice and piano, and for voice and guitar. The vocal arrangement sets a text by Victoria Kamhi that is addressed to a lover in the evocative setting of the city of Aranjuez, full of historical and sensual imagery.
Adiós Granada TOMÁS BARRERA
Born February 13, 1870, La Solana, Ciudad Real Died July 16, 1938, Madrid Composed: 1905 Approximate Duration: 5 minutes
Tomás Barrera made his career as a composer of zarzuelas, a form of musical theater that combines arias, popular tunes, dances, the spoken word, and local color; it flourished in Spain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Barrera’s greatest success was his zarzuela Emigrantes, which he co-wrote with Rafael Calleja Gómez. First produced in Madrid in 1905, Emigrantes is set on a ship departing from Spain and full of Spanish citizens who are seeking a better life in America. The young man Tordiyo sings Adiós Granada as his heartfelt farewell to a beloved city that he knows he will never see again.
Manhã de Carnaval LUIZ BONFÁ
Born February 13, 1870, La Solana, Ciudad Real Died July 16, 1938, Madrid Composed: 1959 Approximate Duration: 3 minutes
Luiz Bonfá was a Brazilian jazz guitarist, singer, and composer. He wrote some of the music from Marcel Camus’ 1959 movie Black Orpheus and became a shining exponent of the emerging bossa nova style. Among the singers who recorded his songs were Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews, and Perry Como. The brief and beautiful Manhã de Carnaval (that title means “Morning of a Carnival”) is a samba; it was part of the music Bonfá composed for Black Orpheus. Those interested in this song should know that there is an excellent performance of it by Perry Como on YouTube, where he is accompanied by Bonfá himself. Sabor a mí ÁLVARO CARRILLO
Born December 21, 1921, San Juan Cacahuatepec, Oaxaca Died April 3, 1969, Mexico City Composed: 1959 Approximate Duration: 3 minutes
Álvaro Carrillo grew up in extreme poverty on a farm in rural Mexico and did not learn to play the guitar until he was twelve. He graduated from agricultural college at 23, but soon abandoned agriculture for music. Carrillo composed about 300 songs, many of them in the form of a bolero, and he quickly became one of the most popular songwriters in Mexico. His career was cut tragically short at age 47 when he and his wife were killed in an automobile accident in Mexico City.
Sabor a mí, composed in 1959 on Carillo’s own text, is probably his most famous song. It is in the form of a bolero, though this is not the bolero of the European tradition—a moderate dance in triple time—but rather a form of intense love song in duple time that developed in Cuba in the late nineteenth century.
El día que me quieras CARLOS GARDEL
Born December 11, 1890, Toulouse, France Died January 24, 1935, Medellín, Colombia Composed: 1934 Approximate Duration: 4 minutes
Born in France, Carlos Gardel was taken to Argentina by his mother when he was two years old and grew up with the musical traditions of Argentina and Uruguay around him. His musical talent quickly became apparent, and he developed rapidly as a singer and songwriter. Gardel’s beautiful voice and good looks contributed to his success as an actor, and he toured and performed throughout Latin America, the United States, and Europe. His death in a plane crash at age 44 was the occasion for a massive outpouring of grief throughout Latin America.
Gardel was particularly famous for his tango songs, songs that combined a heartfelt text with some of the rhythms of the tango. He wrote one of his most famous tango-songs, El día que me quieras (“The Day That You Love Me”), in 1934 and sang it in a film of the same name. Gardel’s own recorded performance of that song gives some idea not only of his musicality but of the richness and beauty of his voice.
Recuerdos de la Alhambra FRANCISCO TÁRREGA
Born December 11, 1890, Toulouse, France Died January 24, 1935, Medellín, Colombia Composed: 1899 Approximate Duration: 6 minutes
Francisco Tárrega was known in his day as “the Sarasate of the guitar,” since he did for the guitar what his countryman Pablo de Sarasate did for the violin: composed for his instrument, toured widely, and helped advance the cause of music for that instrument. Tárrega’s concert tours took him throughout Europe, and he both wrote original music for the guitar as well as arranging the music of other composers for that instrument.
Recuerdos de la Alhambra may well be the best-known piece ever written for guitar. It takes the form of a tremolo study, in which the fourth and fifth fingers of the right hand pick out a rapid tremolo as the thumb and lower fingers play a simple, ostinato-like melody far below. This is shimmering, haunting music, and its delicate textures mask the many difficulties it creates for the performer.
Born June 5, 1898, Fuente Vaqueros, Granada, Spain Died August 19, 1936, Alfacar, Granada, Spain Composed: 1921-24 Approximate Duration: 21 minutes
We remember Federico García Lorca as a poet and playwright, the author of Blood Wedding and other intense plays about life in rural Spain, but his first impulse had been to become a composer. Lorca studied piano for some years and became a close friend of Manuel de Falla, with whom he shared a passion for Spanish folklore and folksongs. García Lorca composed a few short works and sketched an opera, but no significant body of his music has survived, and he chose instead to make his career as poet and playwright.
But García Lorca did collect, arrange, and harmonize a set of twelve ancient Spanish folk songs. These were not published until 1961, a quarter-century after García Lorca had been murdered by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War (a thirteenth song was discovered and added to the collection in 1964). These songs are brief, usually stanzaic in construction, and full of the rhythmic energy of folksongs. This recital offers a selection of these songs, and listeners may take pleasure in comparing García Lorca’s settings of Spanish folk music to the similar settings by Falla heard earlier on the program.
Granada Agustín Lara
Born October 30, 1997, Tiacotolpan, Mexico City Died November 6, 1970, Mexico City Composed: 1932 Approximate Duration: 3 minutes
This recital concludes with one of the most popular songs ever written. Agustín Lara was a Mexican poet, composer, and pianist, who made his reputation performing in clubs and on the radio in Mexico, Cuba, the United States, Spain and elsewhere. He composed about 700 songs, and many of these were about particular cities: Seville, Madrid, Toledo, Veracruz, and others. In 1932 Lara wrote Granada in praise of that city, and it has become his most popular song, sung and recorded by hundreds of performers, ranging from Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra to Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo. Francisco Franco was said to have been so taken with Granada that he granted Lara honorary Spanish citizenship, and in 1997 the song was adopted as the official anthem of the city of Granada.
