Granados: El Pelele

The two books of Goyescas constitute Granados’s best and most durable, as well as his best-known, music. Subtitled Los majos enamorados (Young men in love) they are highly imaginative transcriptions into music of the tapestries and pictures of Francisco Goya (1746-1828), the wild and demonic genius who with Velasquez is usually thought of as one of the great exemplars of Spanish painting. They were completed in 1911 and first performed by Granados himself in Barcelona on 9 March that year. Publication in 1914 was in two books, the first four pieces in one and the remaining two in a second. Each of the Goyecas has a different dedication: the best-known of them, Quejas ó la Maya y el Ruiseñor, Granados inscribed to his wife Amparo; the others are to the pianists Emil [von] Sauer, Édouard Risler, Ricardo Viñes, Harold Bauer and Alfred Cortot respectively.

Released to mark the centenary of the Georgian-born pianist Nikita Magaloff’s birth, these recordings were made over two periods in Geneva’s Victoria Hall (a hallowed Decca recording venue) – in November 1952 (Book I and El pelele) and October/November 1954 (Book II). This is their first release on Decca CD. Lyndon Jenkins writes the excellent sleeve notes.

Daniel del Pino is one of the leading Spanish concert pianists on the international scene and his performances have been heard in the most prestigious venues all over Europe. He is a frequent guest at numerous festivals and has premiered works by José Zárate, Elena Kats-Chernin, Nicolai Kapustin, Francisco Latra and Antón Garcia-Abril.

Garrick Ohlsson injects some much-needed Mediterranean light into this dark time of year with Granados’s pianistic masterpiece, Goyescas. Written in the first decade of the twentieth century, it’s a musical tribute to the great Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, under whose spell Granados had fallen as a young man. Filled with a patriotic fervour for what he saw as a universally great Spanish genius, he wrote several pieces inspired by the painter’s life and times. The six pieces that make up Goyescas are no mere tone-poems but instead draw on details from Goya’s works—notably the Caprichos, a sequence of aquatints that satirized (and outraged) Spanish society. They draw on Spanish folk music too, as in the famous dialogue between the Maiden and the Nightingale, complete with a trilling cadenza at the end for the nightingale.

Another product of Granados’s preoccupation with the painter was the exuberant El pelele, which recounts the tale of a straw man being tossed on a trampoline, while the Allegro de concierto forms a fittingly brilliant endpiece.

A multiple prize-winner at several international competitions, the young Chinese pianist Yun-yi Qin here presents a wide-ranging recital of major works and delightful miniatures that showcases her remarkable ability.

At only sixteen years old, Yun-yi Qin already performs with the technique and maturity of someone twice her age.

The light-fingered elegance required by Haydn and Mozart, the technical and expressive challenges posed by Schubert, and the almost demonic power demanded by Liszt are effortlessly met by this extraordinary teenager, whose assured technique, musical maturity, unaffected virtuosity and busy concert schedule already mark her as an important artist.

Yun-yi Qin was the winner of the 2008 Jaén Piano competition.