Halffter, E: Habanera

In his old age Ernesto Halffter was universally acknowledged in his own right as one of Spain’s leading composers, and in 1983 he received the Premio Nacional de Música for the second time in his life, for his lifelong service to Spanish music. Sometimes described as ‘a cheerful perfectionist’, Halffter was a painstaking composer who wrote mainly orchestral, choral, chamber and piano music, drawing upon the rich traditions of Spanish folk music already opened up by his great predecessors Granados, Albeniz, Pedrell and Falla, but developing them in his own way. Martin Jones has been one of Britain's most highly regarded solo pianists since first coming to international attention in 1968 when he received the Dame Myra Hess Award. The same year he made his London debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and his New York debut at Carnegie Hall, and ever since has been in demand for recitals and concerto performances on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a prolific recording artist and his many discs for Nimbus Records include the complete solo piano works of Mendelssohn, Brahms, Debussy, Grainger, Szymanowski and the sonatas of Alun Hoddinott. The complete solo piano works of Stravinsky was released in July 1997, and he has recently completed a project to record several Spanish piano masters. The soundtrack of the film Howard's End features Martin Jones performing Grainger's Bridal Lullaby and Mock Morris.

Following on from his Tchaikovsky and Glazunov violin concertos disc, Vadim Gluzman now presents a disc of virtuoso violin music by a range of different composers with a sparkling programme fit for any of those virtuosos of days gone by. Indeed, several of them appear in the list of contents in the unaccustomed roles of composer or arranger: Heifetz himself has arranged Fairy Tale, by Medtner, while Szeryng’s version of Halffter’s Habanera receives its world première recording with this release. Other examples of virtuoso-turned-composer are Wieniawski, Francescatti (with a Polka) and Kreisler, whose La Gitana fits into the tradition of virtuoso pieces inspired by gypsy music – a tradition of which Ravel’s Tzigane is of course the jewel.

Here Gluzman performs with Angela Yoffe, his regular duo partner as well as his wife. This well-matched pair has been admired by the reviewers for their intense, passionate and powerful performances as well as for their supreme command of their respective instruments. On their first disc on BIS the reviewer on website Classics Today wrote: ‘Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe push their collective virtuosity sky-high’.