Gaspar Cassadó (1897-1966)
Catalanesca (1922)
Préambulo y Sardana (1965)
Dos cantos populares finlandeses (pub. 2003)
Canción de Leonardo (1951)
Leyenda catalana (before December 14, 1952)
Federico Mompou (1893-1987)
Canço i dansa No.10 (1953, arrangement for guitar, pub 2001)
Canço i dansa No.13 (1972, final manuscript version)
Suite compostelana (1962)
Eugenio Della Chiara (guitar)
rec. 2022, Pesaro, Italy
Naxos 8.579103 [57]
No one, I think, would associate either Gaspar Cassadó or Federico Mompou primarily with the composition of works for the guitar. In the case of Cassadó most would think first of works such as his Suite for Cello and his Cello Concerto (the cello was Cassadó’s own instrument) and three interesting string quartets; where Mompou is concerned, only his works for piano (his instrument) have gained much attention. However, both these composers from Catalonia wrote a small number of rewarding works for the guitar and it is good that they should have been gathered together here in attractive performances by the Italian guitarist Eugenio Della Chiara.
For both composers the influence of Segovia was important in encouraging them to write for the guitar. In the case of Cassadó, Camilla Rubagotti’s booklet essay states that all the pieces he wrote for the guitar were “connected to his friendship with Andrés Segovia”. His Catalanesca was one of the first pieces Segovia received after he invited works from non-guitarists. The Canción de Leonardo was written in memory of Segovia’s son Leonardo, who died in 1937 while still a schoolboy, and seems to be intended “as a sweet lullaby, or canción de cuna [cradle song]” (Rubagotti). Mompou’s relationship with Segovia was perhaps most significant with regard to his Suite compostelana. This was written when Segovia commissioned Mompou to write a concert piece influenced by the history of Galicia. Mompou’s title Suite compostelana clearly alludes to the city of Compostella and, inescapably (especially for a man like Mompou) is very much influenced by the traditions of Catholic mysticism and the famous pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, to the shrine of St. James.
Suite compostelana isthe most substantial work on the disc. Its six movements (‘Preludio’ – ‘Coral’ – ‘Recitative’ – ‘Canción’– ‘Muiñeira’) embrace and articulate a wide range of emotions. The ‘Coral’ evokes, for me at least, the sacred atmosphere of the cathedral which is the destination of the famous pilgrimage, while the closing ‘Muiñeira’ is redolent with the energy of the traditional Galician dance of that name. The Suite compostelana is more concernedwith the visible world than much ofMompou’s music is.The performance by Eugenio Della Chiara is, like the rest of his work throughout the disc, sensitive and eloquent, but the interpretation by Sean Shibe on his album Camino (review), with its sheer intensity and its rhetorically creative use of silence remains my first choice for the work. Shibe’s characterisation of the individual movements, especially the last movement (‘Muiñeira’) is more vivid than that of Della Chiara.
Traditional dance is also an important element in Cassadó’s guitar music, specifically the sardana of his native Catalonia. The sardana informs three of the compositions on this disc:
Préambulo y Sardana, Sardana Chigiana and Catalanesca. The sardana is a circle dance for a group of men and women, holding hands. References to the dance go back to the sixteenth century, though the modern form was established in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Being a manifestation of specifically Catalonian culture, it was banned during the years when Franco ruled Spain, but has been revived since then. The dancers are accompanied by an instrumental ensemble called a cobla, largely made up of wind instruments plus a small drum and sometimes a double bass. My limited familiarity with the dance comes from a student from Barcelona, (thanks Juan!) whose work I supervised some years ago. There are some good videos of quality performances on YouTube. At its best it is a dignified dance which requires considerable precision from those who perform it. The only time I have seen the dance ‘live’ was when my wife and I stumbled across a group of what looked like 17- or 18- year-olds performing a sardana in a small square in Barcelona. Even to my largely untutored eye it was clear that they were not the finest performers, though we got a sense of the charm of the dance. Della Chiara’s performance of the Sardana Chigiana is particularly fine, robust where it needs to be, but full of subtlety too. It is one of the best performances I can remember hearing.
Cassadó and Mompou have a good deal in common if one thinks about them as composers for guitar. Most obvious is their shared Catalan heritage and the fact that each played an instrument other than the guitar – Cassadó the cello and Mompou the piano. Both studied in Paris and were influenced musically by their experiences there; both had significant connections with Segovia. Temperamentally, however, they were very different. Cassadó became a virtuoso cellist and had an extensive and successful career as a concert artist; Mompou, on the other hand was a very shy and quiet man who, it is clear, could never have coped with the kind of career Cassadó had. He preferred to play his own music for his friends, in private ‘concerts’. Reflecting this temperamental difference, Cassadó’s music for guitar is much more extrovert than that of Mompou, employing a greater range of colours and, to some extent, rhythms. Cassadó’s guitar music is decidedly social, more ‘earthly’ than that of Mompou, whose guitar music (like most of his many compositions for piano) is ‘purer’, more austere – as in Cançó i dansa No. 10 (originally written for piano), the ‘Coral’ and ‘Canción’ – both from the Suite compostelana,all ofwhich one might describe as meditative and spiritual. When I listen to pieces like these, I am reminded of one of my favourite passages in Robert Burton’s extraordinary book The Anatomy of Melancholy (pub.1621), where he writes that the best music “ravisheth the soul […], the queen of the senses, by sweet pleasure (which is an happy cure); and corporall tunes pacifie our incorporeall soul: […] and carries it beyond its self, helps, elevates, extends it”.
On the whole I find Eugenio Della Chiara more successful in Cassadó’s music than in Mompou’s, where he doesn’t quite capture (at least not consistently) what Mompou called, borrowing a phrase from St. John of the Cross, musica callada (silent music, or the voice of silence). We are approaching, at least, mystical territory in some of this music, which makes it a considerable challenge for any performer, denied as (s)he is the presence of any kind of musical complexity or thematic development. Mompou’s occasional observations on music – such as “Music […] should seem to come out of the shadow in order to move back into the shadow” – while always beautiful, intriguing and thought-provoking are too enigmatic to be of much help to a performer. This, in short, is exceedingly ‘difficult’ music to perform, though not because it makes excessive demands on the player’s technique. I intend, therefore, no denigration of Signor Della Chiara when I say that he impresses more as an interpreter of Cassadó than Mompou. However, there are no serious disappointments. The recorded sound is good.
Glyn Pursglove
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