Ascenso Works by Albéniz, Cañón-Valencia, Hoyos, Malagón and Ponce de León Santiago Cañón -Valencia (cello) Sono Luminus SLE-70028 42:09 mins
Colombian cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia is now a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and a member of the elite Kronberg Academy. In this defiantly personal solo portrait disc, the only familiar repertoire might be his glittering arrangement of Albéniz’s ‘Leyenda’ from Asturias.
The all-Colombian cast of composers (which includes Cañón-Valencia himself) whets the appetite for an encounter with the distinctive ‘heaven and hell’ of Bogota and its multitude of musics. But what the charismatic virtuoso delivers is some attractive but rather tame premieres, which might have been written anywhere in the last century. Leonardo Federico Hoyos uses an unusual scordatura to underpin his Urban Rhapsody but there’s little else to note, while in Jorge Pinzón Malagón’s Mesonoxian Bach meets Barber. The various inspirations for Ponce de León’s La ruta de la Mariposa (such as the murder of an environmentalist protecting the Mexican Monarch butterfly) are more riveting than the music, though it has a poignant transparency, and is exquisitely performed.
Cañón-Valencia’s own piece, Ascenso Hacia lo Profundo moves beyond the cello ‘as melody instrument’ with its pizzicato and rhythmic textures, but Giovanni Sollima has been here before, while cellists such as the Silkroad’s Mike Block and Abel Selaocoe have opened up the percussive possibilities of the instrument in yet more imaginative ways.
Helen Wallace
