Dutton CDBP 9782, 71:10 [Distrib. by Harmonia mundi] ****:
Featuring a delightful assortment of Iberian color music, this fine restoration from Michael Dutton presents the rarified art of conductor Enrique Arbos (1863-1939), a versatile violinist and composer who had played in trios with Albeniz and led the Spanish premier of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. These finely wrought and superbly remastered inscriptions date from April 1928 and rank among the distinctive shellacs of a period that embraces the cream of Stokowski’s Philadelphia Orchestra and Mengelberg’s Concertgebouw.
The program opens with the three dances from The Three-Cornered Hat (18 April 1928), of which the Final Dance blazes with exuberant colors, right up to the triangle. The Albeniz El corpus en Seville (15-18 April 1928) reveals harmonies and pageantry that could be mistaken for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture. Arbos’ attention to woodwind details throughout proves riveting, the pounding rhythms and string intensity never wavers–ending with a stately carillon–its close providing an orchestral sheen that must have impressed colorists like Ravel. Breezy mischief wends its way through the Triana, a sensuous gait not far from boulevardiers Ibert and Poulenc, Swirling mixes of paint define El Puerto, its fragrant energies winding down in gossamer clouds. Navarra’s (16 April 1928) modal colors invoke the world of Debussy, all the while exerting Albeniz’ distinctively rich, hectic, tonal world.
The music of Granados, like that of Falla, embraces gypsy flair and canto jondo, deep song. The Spanish Dance No. 6 skitters and sways until its middle section, which could star Marlene Dietrich and Cesar Romero in a scene from The Devil is a Woman. The Goyescas Intermezzo recording likely provided the model for the famed Stokowski inscription a generation later. The Arbos glides an uncanny cantabile to the castanets and Carmen-sounding pageant of the middle section, the cellos aglow. The last pages are all nightingales and moonlit trysts. Turina’s La procesion del Rocio (16 April 1928) basks in trembling, mercurial effects that make for a musical equivalent of Turner and Utrillo. When the brass emerges in triumph, the effect possesses colossal power without gaudiness. Two dances from Fantastic Dances conclude the disc: Ensueno and Orgia. The influence of the French Impressionists lies heavy on the former, especially the colors of Paul Dukas. Orgia takes its cue from Falla, the Fire Dance only a lighted match away.
Arbos, besides orchestrating the Iberia of Albeniz, composed successful tone-poems of rich hues in a natural, Iberian idiom. His own Arabian Night (15 April 1928) enjoys languor and soft vibrancy that fuses Spain with Moorish impulses and more than a dash of Borodin. Whether Rudolf Valentino is a sheik or dancing in Rio de Janeiro is debatable. More gypsy-style from the music of Tomas Breton (1850-1923), whose Polo Gitano has violin “guitars” strumming with a triangle and warbling oboe. Sarasate is a kindred spirit here. En la Alhambra weaves its alluring and suavely sensual colors in the woodwinds, harps, and plucked strings, the Moorish affects reminiscent of Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, which Arbos premiered in Spain around 1916. Exemplary music-making from a major, albeit under-rated, talent.
–Gary Lemco
