Naxos
has promoted Balada recently in a well-received series devoted
to his orchestral and operatic work. This is my first encounter
with the Barcelona-born composer and it’s been a stimulating one
enlivened by his advanced technique and range of musical and geographic
sympathies, roaming on this disc from his native Catalonia to
New Orleans. He has been known for his blending of avant-garde
technique and native musical material but that’s not a facet of
development limited only to Balada and his ambition must be measured
by its success.
The
Cello Concerto, written for and dedicated to the performer here,
Michael Sanderling, is a two-movement work some twenty-three minutes
in length. The cellistic line is bent and sinuously pleading occasionally
bursting, very briefly, into a piano supported vamp with drum
backbeat – giving it an effect that acts as an almost phantasmagoric
glimpse into a parallel work. I don’t find the tone clusters and
the striking technical difficulties at all frivolous but in truth
I don’t find the synthesis between musics absolutely sustained
either, at least in the first movement. There is some swoony orchestration
in the Lament opening movement as well as more abrasive material
and a theme that sounds like a cross between I was Born Under
A Wand’ring Star and a Gospel tune insinuates itself
repeatedly into the fabric of the music. The second movement –
"Swinging" – has a lot of sliding and slithering but
a back beat and bass pizzicato establishes the jazz ethos soon
enough along with some truly mordant wind interjections. The cellist
even plays a bass style solo. There is a moment of sorrowing introversion
at the end that strives to elevate the work to an exterior emotive
level. In the end I found a gulf between means and effect in the
Concerto; its very title, "New Orleans" sets up expectations
that the work fails to evoke and the result is a stylised and
imprecise series of gestural approximations.
The
1976 Concerto for Four Guitars is a rather more piquant and aurally
provocative affair that affords moments of stunning sonority.
The amazing canonic colour of the opening movement – utilitarianly
called 1 by the composer – and the hypnotic repetitions and shifting
patterns are all most exciting. The increasingly abrasive orchestration
only adds to the tensile strength of the ensemble. In the second
movement Balada evokes Music Box sonorities, the guitars playing
harmonics; delicate, static, compelling. And, rightly, in the
finale we have a lively off beat agitation and drama and a perfect
close to a Concerto of improbable attainments given the forces
and real imagination. Celebració was written to
celebrate the Catalonian millennium in 1992. Here there is vibrant
metamorphosis, chugging rhythm, orchestral colour and melody including
plenty of driving motoric modernism. The string slither as they
were later to do in the Cello Concerto and the brass can be brutal.
It ends with the earlier material now transformed and coalescence,
an absorption of sorts. The Passacaglia (2002) is also tinged
with provocative aggression; the percussion can be acerbic but
the trajectory remains one of concentration and security, and
increasingly absorbed stillness.
Plenty
then to stimulate the mind and the ear. Balada’s proves a strong
and imaginative voice, strictures about aspects of the Cello Concerto
notwithstanding. I’d particularly recommend the Four Guitar Concerto
to the uninitiated as a means by which best to appreciate his
colouristic palette and acute ear for sonority.
Jonathan
Woolf
see
also review by Hubert
Culot
Leonardo
BALADA (b.1933) Concerto for piano and orchestra No 3 (1999)
Concerto Magico for Guitar and orchestra (1997) Music for Flute
and
Orchestra (2000) Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and the Catalonia
National
Orchestra conducted by Jose Serebrier Rosa Torres-Pardo Piano
Eliot Fisk,
guitar
Magdalena Martinez, Flute Recorded Sala Simfonica Barcelona July
2000 NAXOS
8.555039 [70.11]
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/Oct01/Balada.htm
Leonardo BALADA (born
1933) Hangman, Hangman! (1982) The Town of Greed
(1997) James Longmire (tenor), Johnny; Natalya Kraevsky (soprano),
Sweetheart; Elizabeth Sederburg (contralto), the Mother; Robert
Fire (bass),
the Father; Patrick Jacobs (baritone), the Sheriff; Stephen Neely
(bass),
Hangman; Pittsburgh Camerata; Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Ensemble;
Coleman Pearce Recorded: Kresge Recital Hall, Carnegie Mellon
University,
Pennsylvania, April 2001 NAXOS 8.557090 [76:59]
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2002/Nov02/balada.htm
Benjamin LEES (b.1924)
Horn Concerto (1991) [24.12] Leonardo BALADA
(b.1933) Music for Oboe and Orchestra: Lament from the Cradle
of the Earth
(1993) [20.42] Ellen Taaffe ZWILICH (b.1939) Bassoon Concerto
(1993) [16.54]
William Caballero (horn) Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida (oboe) Nancy
Goeres
(bassoon) Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Lorin Maazel rec. 10-12
May 1996,
Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts, Pittsburgh, PA, USA NEW WORLD
RECORDS
80503-2 [61.48]
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Sept03/Lees_Balada_Zwilich.htm
Michael Sanderling (cello)