This CD is issued by the Non Profit Music Foundation
of Argentina. The violinist Ara Malikian is its guiding angel
and is the violin soloist on the NPM discs I have heard.
The disc is an SACD hybrid and sounds utterly
stunning even on my modest Walkman. The sound is plump, full
of vivid detail and rich in spatial differentiation. The 36
page booklet is an integral part of the CD casing. Basically
the booklet comprises a very sturdy spine and dimple card
case. The CD slips into a pocket at the back of the booklet.
As if to emphasise the rejection of crass commercialism there
is no catalogue number and the name of the label I have guessed
at. Regardless the product is handsome.
Piazzolla's Cuatro estaciones Porteñas
were written not as a cycle but gradually and then grouped.
Verano came in 1964 in a version for bandoneon and
quintet. Autumn followed in 1969 and the other two
in 1970. They are heard here as a satisfying group in the
arrangement made by Desyatnikov for Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata
Baltica. It's highly coloured dynamic stuff, tracking Vivaldi
at times and at others picking up on jazz and tango. It also
echoes the Kremer-inspired works written by Alfred Schnittke.
The piece ends in a gentle chivalric doffing of the hat.
Joan Valent's Quatre Estacions a
Mallorca is in four movements. He was a student of Guinjoan
in Barcelona but also studied in Los Angeles. The poem on
which the piece is based is by Macu Sunyer and is reproduced
in full in the book. The music at first has the insistent
fast-trudging air of the Glass Violin Concerto and even in
the slower episodes makes play with iteration and gradual
transformation. Much the same applies - but in quietly subdued
apparel - in the penultimate quietly murmuring Tardor.
The final Hivern is also unassertive and ends as if
winter's cold has entered the bones.
Jorge Grundman’s Four Sad Seasons
over Madrid is intensely lyrical and fairly sentimental
with the soprano vocalising in a line joined by the solo violin.
This is not difficult music. It's in a single movement of
16 minutes duration and the style is not at all avant-garde.
You might liken this to a tone poem by some extremely able
film composer - rather like John Barry. The piece was written
in memory of someone who had died and who the composer and
other friends had not been able to say goodbye to. The Spring
section has stronger rhythmic spine and a more sharply
adumbrated pulse. We can hear this in the unleashed athletic
and joyously bejewelled writing at 12:10 onwards. It’s sincere,
I have no doubt but this does have something of a Hollywood
scena about it – and I immediately wanted to play it again.
The recording is stunning - you might need
sun-glasses.
Rob Barnett
Ara Malikian (violin)
NON
PROFIT MUSIC NO CATALOGUE NUMBER [68:31] 
