Falla • Granados Falla: The Three-Cornered Hat; Nights in the Garden of Spain; Granados: Goyescas – Intermezzo Jorge Federico Osorio (piano); The Orchestra of the Americas/Carlos Miguel Prieto Linn CKD 625 70:55 mins
The infectious two-act ballet, The Three Cornered Hat, is the atmospheric opener to this recording of two of Manuel de Falla’s key works. Written after the influential composer’s return from Paris to Spain after the outbreak of the First World War, the ballet, commissioned by Diaghilev, is partnered with the work that inspired the ballet impresario to knock on Falla’s door, Nights in the Gardens of Spain. In between, a contrast is offered with Granados and his short, dreamlike Intermezzo from Goyescas.
The youthful Orchestra of the Americas – members are aged between 18-30 – produce a sound full of vitality under conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto in their second recording for Linn, that marries well with Falla’s joyous and superbly expressive orchestral landscape. The folk melodies underpinning The Three Cornered Hat are played with great verve and character, from the opening punchy brass fanfare to the whirling ‘jota’ of the final dance.
Nights in the Gardens of Spain is more impressionistic than the ballet, yet it is also quintessentially Spanish in character, an evocative three-part nocturne for piano and orchestra given a shimmering outing by pianist Jorge Federico Osorio and Prieto’s orchestra.
Sarah Urwin Jones