FALLA La vida breve (Mena)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Manuel de Falla
Genre:
Opera
Label: Chandos
Magazine Review Date: 03/2019
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 62
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CHAN20032
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
(La) Vida breve |
Manuel de Falla, Composer
Aquiles Machado, Paco, Tenor BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Cristina Faus, Grandmother, Mezzo soprano Gustavo Peña, A Voice from the Forge, Tenor José Antonio Lopez, Uncle Sarvaor, Baritone Josep Miquel Ramon, Manuel, Baritone Juanjo Mena, Conductor Manuel de Falla, Composer Nancy Fabiola Herrera, Salud, Mezzo soprano Raquel Lojendio, Carmela, Soprano RTVE Symphony Chorus Segundo Falcón, The Singer, Flamenco singer Vicente Coves, Guitar |
Author: Tim Ashley
In terms of our understanding of Falla’s orchestral and choral writing, the dividends are considerable. Mena prises open textures and sonorities with great subtlety and attention to detail, so that we’re fully able to appreciate the shifting colours of Falla’s writing for strings and woodwind, much indebted to Dukas and Debussy, and his refined yet telling use of brass and percussion. The playing immaculately blends clarity with sensuousness, while the Coro de la Radio e Televisión Española sing with admirable warmth of tone. Their counterpoint in the big Act 1 ‘Intermedio’ is scrupulously clear, where it can sometimes blur. Mena’s fondness for detail is particularly apparent in the scene with the street vendors, who sound like folk singers as Falla intended, rather than operatic voices wafting in the distance.
Yet at times it all feels fractionally too considered. La vida breve gazes not only at French Impressionism but also at the confrontative emotions of verismo, and Mena’s performance, sadly, lacks dramatic bite when placed beside its major rivals. His choice of spacious tempos does indeed echo Frühbeck de Burgos’s 1965 EMI recording (Warner Classics, 3/66), in contrast to García Navarro’s altogether edgier 1978 LSO performance (DG, 11/78 – nla), but he never quite achieves either Frühbeck’s brooding sense of unease or Navarro’s darker, more expressionistic fire. Even the Act 2 dances, done with fastidious elegance, seem genteel in comparison with Frühbeck’s exuberance and Navarro’s hectic exhilaration.
Mena’s cast, similarly, is not quite as good as the competition. Nancy Fabiola Herrera sounds sumptuous as Salud with her warm tone and full upper registers, though the flamenco turns in ‘¡Vivan los que rien!’ could be a bit more precise. Yet beside Victoria de los Ángeles (sorrow incarnate for Frühbeck) or Teresa Berganza (frighteningly intense with Navarro), she seems relatively disengaged until the final catastrophe approaches. Aquiles Machado’s swaggering Paco starts out well but develops a pulse in his voice under pressure, and is no match for Carlo Cossuta (Frühbeck) or José Carreras (Navarro). It’s worth hearing, nevertheless, for the insights Mena brings to bear on Falla’s powers of orchestration, but to get the full measure of the work you need to go elsewhere. My preference is for Navarro, though Frühbeck de Burgos’s recording remains a magnificent achievement that serves Falla’s opera equally well.
Explore the world’s largest classical music catalogue on Apple Music Classical.
Included with an Apple Music subscription. Download now.
Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Events & Offers
From £9.20 / month
SubscribeGramophone Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Events & Offers
From £11.45 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.