Piano Works by Spanish Women Composers
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Maria Teresa Prieto, Maria Luisa Ozaita, Maria Escribano Sanchez, Consuelo Diez, Zulema de la Cruz, Lili Boulanger, Grazyna Bacewicz
Label: Dirección General de la mujer
Magazine Review Date: 4/1993
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 73
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: M3/03
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Cortège |
Lili Boulanger, Composer
Lili Boulanger, Composer Susana Marin, Piano |
| (D'un) vieux jardin |
Lili Boulanger, Composer
Lili Boulanger, Composer Susana Marin, Piano |
| (D'un) jardin clair |
Lili Boulanger, Composer
Lili Boulanger, Composer Susana Marin, Piano |
| (12) variaciones seriales |
Maria Teresa Prieto, Composer
Maria Teresa Prieto, Composer Susana Marin, Piano |
| (12) variaciones tonales |
Maria Teresa Prieto, Composer
Maria Teresa Prieto, Composer Susana Marin, Piano |
| Quasar |
Zulema de la Cruz, Composer
Susana Marin, Piano Zulema de la Cruz, Composer |
| Quejío |
Maria Escribano Sanchez, Composer
Maria Escribano Sanchez, Composer Susana Marin, Piano |
| Tema con variaciones |
Maria Luisa Ozaita, Composer
Maria Luisa Ozaita, Composer Susana Marin, Piano |
| Sad |
Consuelo Diez, Composer
Consuelo Diez, Composer Susana Marin, Piano |
| Sonata for Piano No. 2 |
Grazyna Bacewicz, Composer
Grazyna Bacewicz, Composer Susana Marin, Piano |
Author: Lionel Salter
The most substantial work offered here by the Spanish pianist Susana Marin (a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music) is the Second Sonata by the Polish violinist Grazyna Bacewicz, a prolific composer who had at one time been a pupil of Nadia Boulanger (whose younger sister Lili is represented by three impressionistic miniatures of 1914, of which D'un jardin clair has charm). Though the Sonata, written in 1953, is described in the insert-note—which I should warn you is in Spanish only—as being neo-classical and profoundly Polish in character, I could detect no trace of either of these features: it is, instead, a harshly aggressive, dissonantly atonal work suggestive of some deep well of anger and frustration, which calls for, and receives an almost unremitting hard-hitting style that is heightened by the close recording of a piano with a shallow bass.
The other large-scale work is a set of 24 variations by Maria Teresa Prieto, who at the start of the Spanish Civil War fled to Mexico, where she produced all her work and died, aged 67, in 1975. Her style changed from classical to polytonal (thanks to contact with Milhaud) and thence to a personal kind of serialism, of which the first fruits were the present variations, divided into 12 tonal (though freely so) and 12 serial. (The two groups were in fact originally performed as separate entities.) The variations on the curiously angular and disjointed theme are worked out with skill and invention, though all are so brief as to prompt a desire to find how they would have been developed at greater length. (On my copy there is a skid in the recording at 7'00'' into this track.) Another set of variations, by Maria Luisa Ozaita (b. 1939), based on her 1983 incidental music to Yeats's playAt the hawk's well, is altogether more meandering in effect. In view of their serial nature, the commentary's statement that the variations were written in memory of various composers such as Schumann, Chopin, etc. rather needs to be taken on trust. All the other composers are in their thirties and likewise adopt fashionable uncompromising idioms: Consuelo Diez experiments with pedal effects (depressing it to capture sounds on their decay rather than at their ictus). To me, the least rebarbative of these works is Maria Escribano's Quejio, which, often employing repetition formulas, conjures up an atmosphere of phantas-magorial dreams.'
The other large-scale work is a set of 24 variations by Maria Teresa Prieto, who at the start of the Spanish Civil War fled to Mexico, where she produced all her work and died, aged 67, in 1975. Her style changed from classical to polytonal (thanks to contact with Milhaud) and thence to a personal kind of serialism, of which the first fruits were the present variations, divided into 12 tonal (though freely so) and 12 serial. (The two groups were in fact originally performed as separate entities.) The variations on the curiously angular and disjointed theme are worked out with skill and invention, though all are so brief as to prompt a desire to find how they would have been developed at greater length. (On my copy there is a skid in the recording at 7'00'' into this track.) Another set of variations, by Maria Luisa Ozaita (b. 1939), based on her 1983 incidental music to Yeats's play
Piano Works by Spanish Women Composers
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