Three vividly picturesque piano suites, evoking the colours and rhythms of Spanish life, in a new recording by a native artist trained within the long and distinguished Spanish piano tradition.
Pedro Piquero trained with the Spanish pianist Esteban Sánchez, who had himself studied with Alfred Cortot before returning to his native Spain to pass on his insights into the kind of repertoire recorded here.
Brilliant Classics issued a box of Sánchez’s recordings of Albéniz, and this new recording of Turina’s music by his former student forms a fitting sequel.
The piano lay at the centre of Turina’s life and work, as it did for his near contemporary Maurice Ravel. The piano became the expressive complement to the other instrument that accompanied Turina for most of his life: the camera.
An amateur photographer, with an impeccable eye, he captured “objective” images with his camera and then “subjectivised” them in his music. Seville, his native city, was always with him, whether in presence or in essence, and was his most frequent source of inspiration, starting with his second published work. This ‘painterly suite’ in three movements takes extended snapshots of an orange grove; a prayerful night-vigil shortly before the Easter festivities; and then the celebrations of the Easter fair itself.
Writing the suite in Paris in 1908, Turina describes in Debussyan style not so much the picturesque details of his chosen scenes, but the way he remembers them from far away. Expression reigns over illustration. In just the same way, the opening ‘Exaltación’ of the Danzas fantásticas, encapsulates his relationship with Spanish folk music: evocation, rather than quotation or re-creation.
After the atmospheric introduction, Turina conjures the jota, but his own version of the dance – as is also true of the seguidilla in the central section. This Op.22 set of dances, composed in 1919, became best known in Turina’s later orchestration, but a pianist as capable as Pedro Piquero can evoke a palette of orchestral colours on the piano. One Spanish musicologist has described the Cinco danzas gitanas, composed in 1929, as ‘unquestionably one of [Turina’s] pianistic masterpieces.’
In more distilled fashion than the companion suites here, Turina evokes dances and stilllifes, mixing popular and religious subjects once more, and with an immediacy that would soon become tainted by nostalgia after the tragic caesura of the Spanish Civil War and resulting decades of fascism. Here is Spain pictured in full musical colour, rather than viewed from an oblique angle.
Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) was born in Sevilla, Spain, where he received his first music lessons. He studied in Madrid from 1902 and settled in Paris from 1905 to 1913, where he took composition lessons from Vincent d’Indy at his Schola Cantorum de Paris, while studying the piano with Moritz Moszkowski. Inevitably he came into contact with Debussy and Ravel, and his early compositions were clearly influenced by the Impressionists. However he returned to his native Spain and developed his own style in which the rich folklore, folk music and atmosphere of Spain is predominant. Together with Albéniz, Granados and De Falla he established the Spanish Nationalist School.
This new recording presents a selection of Turina’s piano works: Sevilla- Suite pintoresca Op. 2, 5 Danzas Gitanas Op. 55, and Danzas Fantásticas Op. 22, music of great originality, written in an advanced harmonic idiom, “Spanish” without the commonplace postcard sentimentality.
Played with intense concentration, eloquence and charm by Spanish pianist Pedro Piquero. Born in Seville in 1976, he received his musical training in Spain with Esteban Sánchez and in the United States with Caio Pagano. The pianist Maria João Pires invited him in in 2002 to reside in the Belgais Center for Arts in Portugal. He has won several awards and the following has been written of him: «Piquero exceeds himself … a glorious blend of Glenn Gould and Carlos Kleiber» (Melómano); «this is a genuine recording landmark … the very highest quality» (El País). Pedro Piquero is also a Soto Zen Buddhist monk, disciple of the Japanese Master Gudō Wafu Nishijima.
