Xavier Montsalvatge Poema concertante

HÄNSSLER CLASSIC 98.642

RACHEL BARTON PINE, VIOLIN
NDR RADIOPHILHARMONIE
CELSO ANTUNES

EXCERPTS FROM THE PRESS RELEASE

The distinctive and intriguing Catalan culture of northeast Spain has brought the world a bouquet of unique artists, including the painters Salvator Dali and Joan Miro, architect Antoni Gaudi, composer Isaac Albeniz and cellist Pablo Casals. Composer Xavier Montsalvatge also called this region his home. Born exactly 100 years ago in 1912, Montsalvatge’s composition career spanned a tumultuous era: his career was blossoming just as the Spanish Civil war broke out. Under Franco’s regime, Catalan culture was forbidden, and yet Montsalvatge managed to create a body of work characteristic of his region.

“I’m often asked why more people haven’t heard of Montsalvatge and his music,” says author Roger Evans, whose biography of Montsalvatge was released in Spring 2012. “The fact is that, from the Civil War in the 1930s to the end of Franco’s dictatorship in the 1970’s, Spain was very isolated culturally, and not much of even the best got out — especially if it came from one of the minority cultures like that of Catalonia.”

In commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the composers’ birth, Hänssler, in association with the music publisher Peermusic Classical, released a new recording of Montsalvatge’s work.

Montsalvatge’s Poema concertante for violin and orchestra was commissioned by Henryk Szeryng, the internationally renowned violinist. Szeryng asked Xavier Montsalvatge to write a shorter work that he could perform as an alternative to Ernest Chausson’s Poème for violin and orchestra. “One of its most unusual features is the extended unaccompanied cadenza with which the soloist begins after a brief orchestral introduction,” says the violinist Rachel Barton Pine. “The only other known piece in the repertoire with such a scheme is Ravel’s Tzigane. Poema concertante is as satisfying to play as it is to listen to, being beautifully lyrical with moments of great virtuosity.”

XAVIER MONTSALVATGE (1912-2002): A CATALAN COMPOSER BY ROGER EVANS

In 1948, Montsalvatge had an experience that was unique in his career: he composed a work that received a brilliant prize but did not find favour with the presenters of concerto. The important Polish-Mexican violinist Henryk Szeryng (who was “in love with Barcelona”) had, however, heard the unlucky Sinfonia mediterránea with admiration and asked Montsalvatge to confect a work for violin and orchestra. The composer highlights the value of the commission by telling us: “He was a master of international stature … with a foolproof technique, with a sound and musical utterance of characteristic beauty” who, besides, “was one of the first performers in the dark post-Civil War years who agreed to come to Spain and perform in our [principal concert hall ] Palau de la Música Catalana.”

Szeryng desired that the new work not be a concerto, but a shorter work that he could perform as an alternative to Ernest Chausson’s Poème for violin and orchestra, Op. 25. This gave Montsalvatge, who had achieved the skills of a professional violinist but chosen not to continue that career, the opportunity to compose his first major work for the instrument and his first composition for soloist and symphony orchestra. The resulting Poeme concertante keeps up a correspondence with his trademark Cuban manner, while also sounding very much in the virtuoso and expressive lineage of the Chausson that Szeryng had mentioned. The dedicatee played the premiere, with Eduard Toldrà leading the Municipal orchestra at the Palau, and later took it on tour. Almost three decades later, however, and despite its publication abroad, Montsalvatge expressed the feeling that it had not had the exposure that it deserved.

XAVIER MONTSALVATGE (1912-2002)

Xavier Montsalvatge, the centenary of whose birth this recording celebrates, is one of the most representative figures of what is called the “lost generation” in Spain who came of age during the Franco regime. Nonetheless, his musical output gained substantial international renown – due in large part to performances by his friends Victoria de los Angeles, Alicia de Larrocha, Montserrat Caballé and Pablo Casals – and has become an important point of reference within the contemporary music scene in Spain.

Born into a family of Catalan bankers, writers, painters, and sculptors in Girona, Montsalvatge lived in Barcelona from the age of nine. There he received a remarkably progressive general education while also studying intensively in the municipal music school. Repelled by the Wagnerism urged on him by his teachers, he favoured the music of Ravel and “Les Six”, and with the prize money awarded for his Tres impromptus for piano (1933), he paid his first visit to Paris. Following the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) he became a music critic for the journal Destino, a post he held for more than thirty years, and resumed his life as a composer, writing a number of ballets under the influence of Stravinsky.

Montsalvatge first gained widespread recognition with the set of songs Cinco canciones negras (1945); they mark the beginning of his “Caribbean” period that includes the Cuarteto indiano (1951), in which he made use of West Indian-inspired materials. The Concerto breve (1953) for piano and orchestra marks the starting point of his predominant use of more abstract forms, as can also be heard in the post-impressionism present in the Sonatine pour Yvette (1960) and the twelve-tone techniques in such works as Cinco invocaciones al Crucificado (1969), Laberinto (1970) for orchestra, and the Sonata concertante for cello and piano 1971). Subsequently, the composer settled into a more eclectic style, which best describes the rest of his production. This is found in his concertos for harmp (1975), harpsichord (1977), and guitar (1980), as well as the Sinfonia de Rèquiem (1985). He was also active in the field of opera, composing the “magic opera” El gato con botas (1946), Una voce in off (1961), and Babel (1967).

CREDITS

Recorded: May 30, 2011, Großer Sendesaal, NDR Hannover
Recording Engineer: Hans-Ulrich Bastin
Sound Engineer: Daniel Kemper
Assistance: Francesco Calcara, Lars Wartenberg
Editing: Hans-Ulrich Bastin
Executive Producer: Sören Meyer-Eller
Cover Design: Krüger & Ko., Regine Trüg
Booklet Layout: Wolfgang During