Monday, 27 January 2025

Granados Goyescas

 Day 27

Granados Goyescas

Alicia de Larrocha


So far in this project I have not included any piano music or music from Spain so I will kill two birds with one stone with Goyescas.

I'm not sure that I have heard any of Granados' music before - I might possibly have heard the maiden and the nightingale, which is part of this suite, but I don't have any strong memories of it. So I came to this music with no expectations but an assumption that it would be full of Spanish rhythms and seductive harmonies.

I have to say that I was rather disappointed. There were some lovely moments (the quiet passage before the coda in the last piece stands out for me) but it seems much of the time as if the music was not going anywhere but was progressing rather aimlessly. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the stories behind the pieces. That might have given a better shape to my appreciation, but as a purely musical experience this did not really generate much enthusiasm or commitment on my part. Ernest Newman said of Goyescas that it was 'piano music of the purest kind', something which I find difficult to comprehend. but he also said of it that it was ' the finest written out improvisation'. I certainly can relate to that. One can imagine Granados sitting at the piano looking at Goya's pictures and seeing where his fingers took him on the keyboard. 

As a piece of piano writing Goyescas has some remarkable textures makes finger-breaking technical demands. It it is real virtuoso music. Alicia de Larrocha was always a specialist in this music. She was known to have very small hands and listening to her playing one can only be astonished at just how she was able to get all of the notes under her fingers.

So I doubt that I will be returning to Goyescas any time soon. Granados expanded the music into an opera of the same name. Again I don't think that that will be on my list of pieces to explore.

 


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