Medicarts MMO25-2, 78:14 (www.mediciarts.co.uk) **** [Distr. by Naxos]:
Atualfo Argenta (1913-1958), another in a list of youthful casualties in the world of classical music, made these recordings of Spanish repertory 1955-1957. Argenta had been well on his way to an international career of note, encouraged by his mentor Carl Schuricht. A conductor in the passionate yet objectivist mode similar to Igor Markevitch, Argenta could evince rhythmic acuity and variegated colors from his chosen ensembles. Argenta’s work with Teresa Berganza (b. 1935) repeats the same pieces of Falla she recorded to excellent effect with Ernest Ansermet. While the recorded sound in live performance (21 February 1957) of Brujo came off a bit thin on my outside speakers, resorting to earphones had a salutary effect, enhancing the orchestral definition to a degree that the oboe and flute solos in El amor brujo quite shimmered. Berganza’s voice slides through her evocations of love and desire with a snaky silkiness, less jagged and rasping than in her work with Ansermet. The French National Radio Orchestra, famed at this time for its solid work with Desormiere and Tzipine, proves pliant in music like the Pantomime and the Dance of the Game of Love, whose sultriness Stokowski likewise made so luminous in his Philadelphia inscription. Under Argenta, the brass emanates a Gershwinesque sass, only to yield to the hothouse flower of Berganza’s Bells of Dawn.
The Nights in the Gardens of Spain features Gonzalo Soriano (1913-1972), a fervent advocate of this tone-poem concerto, here playing in more reliable form than, say, in his New York Philharmonic collaboration in the Schumann Concerto with Mitropoulos. The acoustic is both distant and somewhat hollow, but the passion of Falla’s colors cannot be denied. The brass section, pungent and misterioso, announces the second half of the first movement, Soriano splashing colors and canto jondo in the manner of a Spanish Debussy. Another hazy surface amidst pounding rhythms for Distant Dance, Soriano with bristling octaves and glissandi, then jazzy, Moorish riffs and ostinati not far from Ravel. The sultry pedal point carries us to the piano’s frenzied segue to the Gardens of the Sierra de Cordoba, a martially scintillating realization as sexy as any torch song by Marlene Dietrich. Despite sonic limitations, this lovely performance enjoys an idiomatic rightness that any collector will cherish.
The two excerpts from the concert performance of La vida breve contain the familiar introduction, but rather than the standard Dance, we hear Berganza intone “Vivan los que rien!” An olfactory haze hangs over the Introduction, then it segues into an aria whose tone color might be the pinon noir of vocal wines, throat and head projecting fluent, vibrant energy. The three dances from Le Tricorne are those familiar from time immemorial; in my case, I first heard the Neighbors’ Dance, the Seguidilla under Mitropoulos. The Miller’s Dance, the Farruca, throbs with spices and flamenco boots, rhythms only a step away from Stravinsky of The Rite of Spring. The Final Dance, the Jota, whirls, a feria of visceral, ceremonial energies, absolutely rousing. As encores, the producers give us 1955 Madrid inscriptions from the world of zarzuela, that populist art-form that serves Spain as the mazurka serves Poland. The Polo gitano, gypsy dance, wafts delicate and sensuous via plucked strings, winds, and harp; the Zapateado pulsates even as the upper woodwind voices, strings, and castanets sail with Iberian esprit.
–Gary Lemco
