Blancafort: Cavatina i diàleg (1934)

The Catalan composer Manuel Blancafort believed strongly in the importance of nationalism in music and was keen to follow in the footsteps of Albéniz, Granados and Falla, but always with a Catalan bias.

Most of the works on this recording belong to a prolific period of creative activity towards the end of the 1920s. Depicting a transatlantic journey to the USA, with impressions of both the ocean and life on board ship, the American Souvenir suite also includes a vivid yet tender homage to Charlie Chaplin.

Inspired by the classicism of Bach and Scarlatti, the Sonatina antiga surprises with its bold harmonic writing. The impressionistic Ermita i panorama conjures up, through the development of a folk tune, the silence of twilight within the Catalan hermitage of Puiggraciós and the view of the landscape from the summit of the hill