Spanish String Quartet Music from Quatuor Byron

courtesy of PIAS

Another new release scheduled to come out this Friday is the second album of Quatuor Byron released by Aparté. The members are violinists Wendy Ghysels and François James, violist Robin Lemmel, and cello Coralie Devars, each of whom is from a different European country. The title of their new album is Souvenir d’Espagne, and most of the tracks are devoted to the music of Joaquin Turina. However, for the last four tracks they are joined by guitarist Matteo Mela for a performance of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Opus 143 guitar quintet. As usual, Amazon.com has create a Web page for processing pre-orders.

Ironically, that quintet was the only composition familiar to me when I first encountered this new recording. I came to know it through my collection of recordings made by guitarist Andrés Segovia. (Most likely, Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed the piece for Segovia.) Furthermore, readers may recall that, a little over a week ago, I had my first encounter with this quintet in performance as part of a recital that brought guitarist Sean Shibe together with the members of the Quatuor Van Kuijk:  violinists Nicolas Van Kuijk and Sylvain Favre-Bulle, violist Emmanuel François, and cellist Anthony Kondo.

Where Turina is concerned, most of the few encounters I have experienced have involved art song. The only significant exception is an encounter with his Opus 67 piano quartet in A minor back in June of 2012 at an Old First Concerts program, which took place during my tenure with Examiner.com. Ironically, the chamber ensemble included a guitarist, who joined them for a performance of the Castelnuovo-Tedesco quintet.

The Turina string quartet included on the new Aparté album is an early composition, Opus 4, completed in 1911. It has the subtitle “de la guitarra,” perhaps because much of the thematic material can be found in the guitar repertoire. The quartet is flanked on either side by much later offerings. It begins with the Opus 34, which amounts to a tone poem in microcosm entitled “La oración del torero” (the bullfighter’s prayer). This was composed in 1925; and ten years later Turina composed the selection that follows the Opus 4 quartet, the Opus 87 “Serenata.”

Taken as a whole, Quatuor Byron’s album provides an engaging journey of discovery. However, I am not sure that the Turina selections have much staying power. Hopefully, I shall be as fortunate enough in encountering recital performances of those selections as I have already been in my acquaintance with Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s guitar quintet.