Solo piano music represents
a large portion of Granados's compositional
output of which a considerable amount
has never been recorded. The Naxos undertaking
to record all of it is therefore an
important event. Having reached volume
eight, the composer's most well known
works have already been committed to
disc, the policy having been to get
the series off to a good start with
the better works. As we come to the
tail end of the enterprise there is
little left except early works written
when the composer was in his late teens
and early twenties; one-off purchasers
of this disc need to be warned that
it does not contain a representative
cross-section of the Granados piano
music. Nevertheless, the disc is not
without charm and there is interest
in that two-thirds of all the pieces
are receiving world premiere recordings.
The trouble with listening
to music by a composer who has not yet
fully realised his own voice is that
it is almost impossible not to be constantly
reminded of the work of other musicians.
In my case, on hearing the first and
third pieces, both salon–style waltzes,
it was Scott Joplin, Granados’s direct
contemporary that came to mind. This
may seem bizarre but if you can imagine
a triple time rag with modulations and
structure similar to Joplin, then you
will know what I mean. There cannot
have been a direct influence but it
does suggest the existence of a Western
19th century generic piano salon style
that was being adapted to different
national traditions. Only a few years
after these pieces were written, both
composers were being published and selling
well on both sides of the Atlantic.
Ironically, it was returning from America
during the first war that Granados and
his wife were killed, their ship being
torpedoed by a German submarine.
Other music betrays
real influences. The sixth piece, Royal
March, derives from Schumann’s repeating
block chords style and the one after
that, Cardboard soldiers, with
its stereotypical augmented seconds,
is a nod to the so-called
orient. What that really means is a
Muslim influence coming to Spain via
North Africa.
Among the twenty two
pieces that comprise the Álbum
de melodías, there are specific
tributes to Chopin, Beethoven and Wagner,
and their names are incorporated in
the titles, one of them simply called
Beethoven. Chopin gets pastiche
Mazurka and Wagner is represented by
some Tristanesque chromaticisms
in a short and formless piece. The Album
manuscript was, apparently, a kind
of wide-ranging scrap book of musical
jottings. Not just musical. It included
aphorisms of Granados’ own written in
margins, and a few sketches. Some of
the pieces were unfinished (not included
here) and others disconcertingly end
in a different key from that in which
they started. The Pianist, Douglas Riva,
in his booklet note regards Primavera
as the finest piece in the collection.
At less than two minutes it is a little
pianistic gem consisting of a simple,
beautifully-shaped melody with a flowing,
Mendelssohnian accompaniment.
For some time it has
been the pianist, Alicia de Larrocha,
who has been associated with the proselytising
of Granados’s piano music. Douglas Riva,
who knows her and has worked with her,
brings a slightly different manner to
the music that is perhaps straighter
and more steady. I like his playing.
He makes no attempt to make a case for
these youthful pieces by overplaying
them. The music is not characterised
by ostentation or rhetoric but often
by restrained and subtle textures. The
great critic/writer, Ernest Newman,
was an early supporter of Granados and
said that playing through some of his
piano music was, "like a joyous
wading knee-deep through beds of gorgeous
flowers - always with a sure way through
and the clearest of light and air around
us". Douglas Riva respectfully shows
us that Granados’ special textural qualities
are foreshadowed in much of this early
work.
A disc of considerable
interest in terms of Granados’s early
development but also enjoyable in its
own right.
John Leeman
Douglas Riva, Piano 
