Search - Harold Gramatges, Roberto Urbay :: Harold Gramatges: Obra completa para piano

Cuban virtuosity and brilliance

Kilemyan | Copenhagen, Denmark | 08/14/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Complete Piano Works of Harold Gramatges.



About seven years ago I obtained a superb double CD from amazon.com

This double CD was released by the Cuban record company EGREM and contains fourteen piano works by the contemporary Cuban composer Harold Gramatges (*1918).



Harold Gramatges completed fourteen works for solo piano between 1937 and 1989. Among these works are the romantic "Pensando en ti" (1937), a lovely piece influenced by Schumann and dedicated to the composer's wife-to-be. The neo-Classicist "Sonata in E Sharp" (1942), originally scored for harpsichord solo, was written while the composer studied with Aaron Copland in the United States. The nationalist "Dos danzas cubanas (1949)", written during the composer's second trip to the United States, is based on two Cuban popular tunes: Montuna and Sonera. I guess these two wonderful dances were written in New York when the composer had homesickness and was longing for his native Santiago de Cuba.



The double CD also contains three works from Harold Gramatges' avant-garde period, for instance "Movil I" (1969), in which the composer employs new compositional techniques (e.g. serialism), and is searching for new timbres and expressions (the pianist uses percussion sticks). Another interesting work from the avant-garde period is "Incidencias" (1977), where the composer employs aleatory forms and new expressions such as a prepared piano (the pianist prepares the piano strings with a small chain).



The music on the double CD is brilliantly performed by Roberto Urbay, who emerged as one of the young pianists in Cuba in the 1970s. Roberto Urbay is a virtuoso which can be heard on the expressive and breathtaking "Estudio de contrastes" (1974).



Harold Gramatges will turn 90 in September 2008. Cuban record companies like EGREM, Colibrí and Unicornio have recently discovered a vast treasure of Cuban art music. In the near future these record companies will release CDs with piano and chamber music of Harold Gramatges and his contemporaries José Ardévol (who was Gramatges' teacher at the Havana Municipal Conservatory in the 1940s), Gisela Hernández, Edgardo Martín, Hilario González, and Argeliers León.



Cuba has produced numerous excellent classical composers and musicians, and international composers such as Luigi Nono, Nino Rota, Hans Werner Henze, and Peter Schatt have visited Cuba.

"