Search - Robert Cohen, Joaquin Rodrigo, Enrique Bátiz :: Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez; Concertos; Orchestral Works [Box Set]

Not cutting edge, but highly enjoyable, sunny, light-hearted

Discophage | France | 10/03/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The music of Rodrigo breaks no ground, old or new, but it is sunny, light-hearted, easy listening and colorfully orchestrated. Its language is that of the post-Debussy/Ravel "musique française" and "musique espagnole" written in the first half of the 20th by composers such as Sauguet, Milhaud, Ibert or Falla, with late-Romantic outbursts pointing to British composers like Delius or Bax.



The universal fame acquired by the Ajanjuez Concerto and Rodrigo's other Concertos for Guitar(s) has overshadowed the fact that he wrote a number of concertos for other solo instruments: flute, harp, piano, cello and violin. Missing from this compilation are some of his more recent pieces, such as the Concierto como un divertimento for Cello, Concierto para une fiesta for Guitar, as well as the early Juglares for Piano and Orchestra (1923); there is also apparently a version for Guitar of the "Heroic" Piano Concerto.



It is hardly surprising that a piece subtitled "Heroic" and setting out to depict different facets of Heroism, with its four movement exploring "the Sword, the Spur, the Cross and the Laurel", should be anything short of bombastic. It took me a few hearings to warm up to Rodrigo's Piano Concerto - enough to become less sensitive to its showy Liszt and Rachmaninoff borrowings, and more open to its Ravel, Prokoviev and Falla similitudes. And in its best moments there are twists and turns of orchestration that seem to point to a kind of self-deprecating irony, as if Rodrigo was showing us that he was only monkeying the grand Hollywood gestures, without entirely believing in them.



In its genre, the "Summer" Violin Concerto is a great piece, as joyful and colorful as thoses of Khatchaturian and Prokofiev - and, in my opinion, not inferior to them; I wonder why it hasn't acquired the same pride of place at the core of the Violin repertoire, in concert and on disc. As it is, I am aware of only two other recordings, one made by Christian Ferras and George Enescu in 1953 and aptly reissued by Testament with other early Ferras recordings (see my review of Rodrigo: Concierto de estio; Semenoff; Double Concerto; Elizalde; Violin Concerto),and one by Michael Guttman and José Serebrier on ASV (Four Seasons) in a nice collection with four concertos bearing the four seasons as titles. In the present one, Augustin Leon Ara and Enrique Batiz seem well on top of the music, and the sound is of course incomparably better than with Ferras.



I also greatly enjoyed the Cello Concerto ("Concierto en modo galante"), with its first movement sounding like a modernized Vivaldi cello Concerto or Bach seen through the eyes of Stravinsky, its center part a wistful, brooding, meditative cantilena with a pastoral trio full of bird calls, hurdy-gurdy tunes and lifting country dances, its finale a kind of galant Cucarracha, and again a colorful and perky orchestration, full of sardonic skids out of line.



The last disc is devoted to Rodrigo's symphonic output, with tone poems composed between 1925 and 1976. Again they are very enjoyable, couched in the same kind of post-Debussy/Ravel language with whiffs of late-Romanticism evocative of Delius or Bax. In fact, "Musica para un jardin" (Music for a Garden) and "A la busca del mas allà" (In Search of the Beyond) could easily pass of for additions to Jacques Ibert's "Ports of Call". The first is introduced by a joyous orchestral outburst immediately cut short by more mysterious and nocturnal moods evocative of Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole, inluding a flute-led and xylophone-punctuated descent strikingly reminiscent of Wozzeck's suicide in the pond, soon to be followed by a plangent English horn and oboe melody over a soft cushion of strings with celesta and bell punctuations - beautifully atmospheric. Likewise "A la busca...", framed by two suspended cymbals sweeps, has the same kind of mysterious, oriental-sounding melismatas entoned by flute or english horn over soft cushions of strings with xylophone or celesta punctuations, along with a magnificently lyrical theme given to the violins over woodwind bird calls, evocative of Bax' tone poems. Again, highly atmospheric and quite beautiful. "Per la flor..." starts very military-like with an assertive drum tatoo and slightly dissonant brass fanfares, only to calm down into a nostalgic harp-accompanied recitative for cello developping into a passage of Tchaikovskyan lyrical intensity. The music then alternates between the dramatic-military (integral with the march for fifes), sometimes evocative of Shostakovich's War Symphonies, and the nostalgic-Romantic. It ends with a gloomy funeral march, wonderfully orchestrated (harp ostinato, bass clarinet, english horn in its low registers,) and developping to a peak of intensity before abruptly ending.



The 2nd of the Piezas Infantiles from 1925, "Despues de un cuento" sounds exactly in the same style as the 1976 "A la busca del mas alla". Apparently Rodrigo is one of those composers who never evolved, writing in the last decades of the 20th century the same kind of impressionistic music that wasn't so cutting edge anymore even when he started writing it it is first decades. But now that the distance of time has reduced all the smoldering stylistic controversies to cold ashes, we can enjoy Rodrigo's music for what it offers, regardless of when it was written: its unabashed lyricism, its soaring melodies, its sense of color.



These four well-filled discs (all over 70 minutes) were first recorded between 1980 and 1985 and released by EMI. They've been licensed by the cheapo-cheapo Brilliant, but EMI has also released the complete series in a budget box (The Rodrigo Edition (4 CDs): Concertos & Orchestral Works Conducted by Enrique Batiz). At that price, it is no doubt the best possible introduction to the music of Rodrigo. Those with a liking for Falla and post Debussy-Ravel French music, as well as the late-Romantic music of Suk, Vaughan-Williams, Delius and Bax and the likes, should no doubt enjoy it.

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