FALLA: The Three-Cornered Hat ballet; Zarzuela Arias – Victoria de los Angeles, soprano/Philharmonia Orchestra/ Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos/Montserrat Caballe, soprano/Orchestra cond. by Eugenio M. Marco
HDTT HDCD193, 77:16 [www.highdeftapetransfers.com] ****:
The EMI 1963 inscription of Falla’s 1919 The Three-Cornered Hat with Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos (b. 1933) and Catalan soprano Victoria de los Angeles (1923-2005) already held legendary status among collectors, so its stereotape revivification via HDTT comes as a special pleasure. Not only is Falla’s swirling music, its Basque and Andalusian rhythms, thoroughly infectious, but Burgos’ response from the Philharmonia Orchestra at Kingsway Hall generates so much idiomatic color from his winds, percussion, and color battery that the fever enters the blood, so to speak. The allegorical tale of mischievous lechery and mock-seduction passes by briskly and whimsically–a kind of ‘The Fox and the Grapes’ as a bawdy fable–the fleet machinations of woodwinds, harp, and strings quite virtuosic, well beyond the relatively staid performance by Ernest Ansermet, which still managed to set a fine standard of excellence. As for the music, it mocks Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Beethoven’s Fifth, some figures from Prokofiev, and likely, itself. The Miller’s Dance and his wife’s variation carry all of the sensuality we want from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, except the idiom drips with Spanish redolence.
The overt sensuality of the Miller’s Dance (furruca) finds vivid counterparts in the Sequidillas and final Jota, but no less in the cante jondo declamations from Victoria de los Angeles, whose voice promises worldly and other-worldly delights. Even the cuckoo makes his appearance, prior to some weaving clarinet, English horn, and oboe riffs with harp. Equally strutting is the bassoon, just prior to the Corregidor’s Dance, which emerges in something like stile galant. The illuminated performance of Act II testifies to the mastery Falla had achieved over a diverse range of musical styles in brilliant orchestration, certainly the equal of Respighi. Burgos’ tempos are brisk, even quick, so the level of orchestral execution remains deft, even dazzling. Ole!
Montserrat Caballe (b. 1933) recorded the selection of eight Zarzuela Arias for RCA in 1966, here transferred from quarter-track commercial tape. These Romantic-style arias enjoy dance-like flourishes, accompanied by woodwinds, triangle, strings and harp. The style fluctuates between dramatic recitative, ballade, cadenza, and arioso, with the tessitura’s often taking Caballe high into her coloratura stratosphere. When the bel canto style reigns, as in El Rey Que Rabio, we can feel a sympathy with Puccini and the Mediterranean style in opera. The lilt in Bohemias might point to an illumined moment in Verdi or Ponchielli. “Marina” conveys aspects of Thomas’ Mignon and the French side of bel canto, despite the obviously Iberian genre. “El Barquillero” clearly resonates with a gypsy style, an alternately guttural and sliding approach to the voice, a broken-style, pompous melody that often echoes moments in Der Fledermaus in its vocal finesse. Rousing castanets, winds, and strings announce “El Nino Judio,” a vocal series of veronicas in ballad form whose rhythms caper and prance of romantic nights in Madrid. Finally, “La Rosa del Azafran,” a concession, perhaps, to the Moorish basis of Spanish music. The melodic tissue proves rather modal, the vocal flourishes distilled of some erotic secret. Caballe’s chest tone adds a dark spice to the proceedings, and her vocal power rises to the strings and harp with quivering effect.
— Gary Lemco
