Two Guitarists Survey Spanish Repertoire

Four months ago this site reported on a harmonia mundi album entitled Encuentro, the Spanish noun for “encounter.” That title referred to encounters between Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca based on their shared interests in the folk origins of Spanish song. It also referred to the encounter of a flamenco singer, Estrella Morente, with a classically-trained pianist, Javier Perianes, to account for music arising from the encounters of Falla and Lorca.

Last night Herbst Theatre provided the venue for a similar encounter of performers, whose programming was inspired, at least in part, by that relationship between Falla and Lorca. This was the latest joint presentation by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts and the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Guitar Series. In this case the encounter was between two master guitarists, both of whom have previously performed for SFP. American Eliot Fisk was appearing for the fourth time since his debut in 1997; and Spanish guitarist Ángel Romero was making his second appearance, having made his solo debut in 2008. He is also known for his many performances with The Romeros, joining his brothers Celin and Pepe in a quartet created and led by their father Celedonio.

Fisk and Romero collaborated on preparing two-guitar arrangements of the two major compositions on the Encuentro album. The Falla offering consisted of six of the songs collected in Siete canciones populares españolas (seven popular Spanish songs), composed in 1914. Lorca was represented by eight of the songs in his collection Canciones españolas antiguas (old Spanish songs), for which Lorca himself wrote the original piano accompaniment. The collection consists of twelve songs, and only six of the eight performed were listed in the program. The interest in “origins” reflected by both composers was captured in the title of the evening’s program, Viva España.

Both of these collections were well represented by the Fisk-Romero transcriptions. The one Falla song that was omitted (“Seguidilla murciana”) was the most overtly pianistic. In the remaining selections Romero consistently took the vocal line, while Fisk accounted for the piano accompaniment (much of which was clearly inspired by Falla’s familiarity with Spanish guitar technique). The Lorca settings, on the other hand, were, for the most part, strophic. This allowed both Fisk and Romero to present their own takes on playing the “tune” of the song itself.

Much of the rest of the program involved the reflections of other Spanish composers on source material similar to that harvested by Falla and Lorca. Isaac Albéniz was represented by two of his more familiar piano pieces, “Sevilla” from his first Suite española and “Torre Bermeja” (red tower) from his Opus 92 collection of twelve Piezas características. Both of these involved Albéniz translating familiar guitar tropes into piano passages; so, to a great extent, Fisk’s solo transcriptions were restoring Albéniz’ transformations back to their “natural order.” The same could probably be said of his solo arrangements of Manuel Ponce’s lyrical “Estrellita” and Ernesto Halffter’s “Habanera.” On the other hand Francisco Tarrega was represented by his arrangement of a virtuoso violin étude composed by Jean-Delphin Alard for ambitious students.

For his own solo portion of the program, Romero played two pieces composed by his father, “Malagueña” and “Fantasia.” While there was relatively little spoken introduction of any of the music on the program, Romero became positively chatty in introducing his father’s music. The “method behind the madness” soon became apparent: Both of the pieces Romero played were dedicated by his father to the woman he would subsequently marry. As Romero put it, without that music, he might not have come into existence!

The one significant departure from Spain came at the very beginning of the evening. Fisk and Romero jointly transcribed a lute concerto in D major by Antonio Vivaldi. In my student days this was frequently called the “Vivaldi guitar concerto,” because it was a favorite among guitarists who were swept up in the rising Baroque movement. However, Vivaldi seems to have been unfamiliar with both Spanish music and Spanish instruments. Romero took the solo lute part, and Fisk provided ripieno support.

The one transcription that never really rose to the heights of the original was that of the Adagio movement from Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” This again was a joint transcription with Romero again taking the solo line. If Friday night’s Ébène Quartet performance of the second of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 59 quartet reflected on the earlier performance of the first of the set by the Danish String Quartet, then last night’s Rodrigo selection reflected on Ébène saluting Miles Davis in their encore. When it comes to transcribing Rodrigo’s concerto, it is hard to beat how Gil Evans arranged that Adagio for Davis’ Sketches of Spain album. Evans clearly appreciated Rodrigo’s bold sweeps of orchestral sonorities and found just the right way to rework them for big band resources. However, those bold sweeps cannot get very far with only two guitars; so it was hard to listen to the Fisk-Romero arrangement without the bolder sonorities of both Rodrigo and Evans reverberating in memory.

Eliot Fisk and Angel Romero to Join Forces

Eliot Fisk and Ángel Romero (courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

The next guitar recital to be presented jointly by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts and the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Guitar Series will see the return of two frequently visiting guitarists. Eliot Fisk made his SFP debut in 1997 and will be making his fourth appearance as an SFP recitalist. Ángel Romero was a founding member, in 1960, of the guitar quartet called The Romeros, created by his father Celedonio and also including his two brothers Celin and Pepe. As a result he had an international reputation, which included giving concerts in San Francisco, long before SFP was founded in 1979. He first visited SFP as a soloist in 2008, and the coming concert will mark his second SFP appearance.

Between the two of them, these artists encompass a broad scope of repertoire. The full extent of that breadth cannot be captured in a single evening’s program. Nevertheless, the diversity of the offerings will be extensive. For example there will be two solo-and-accompaniment arrangements of concerto music by two different composers, Antonio Vivaldi (his D major concerto for lute and strings) and Joaquín Rodrigo (the Adagio movement from his “Concierto de Aranjuez”). In addition Fisk and Romero have collaborated on two-guitar arrangements of settings of popular Spanish songs by Federico García Lorca. As might be guessed, Celedonio Romero will be recognized with performances of his “Malagueña” and “Fantasia.” Several Spanish composers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will be included as well.

This performance will take place in Herbst Theatre beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 10. The entrance to Herbst is the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. Tickets prices are $55 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $45 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $35 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a City Box Office event page.

A Recent harmonia mundi Release Presents a Musical “Encounter” between Falla and Lorca

Last September harmonia mundi released an album consisting primarily of Spanish songs entitled Encuentro. The title is the Spanish noun for “encounter;” and the encounter in question is between Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca. As the booklet notes by Yvan Nommick (translated into English by Charles Johnston) explain, Falla and Lorca collaborated on a variety of projects; so the album is concerned less with imagining the actual encounter between the two of them and more with exploring their shared interests in the folk origins of Spanish song. Those interests are underscored by having the songs on the album performed by a flamenco singer, Estrella Morente, rather than an “art song” vocalist. Since both composers wrote setting of these songs with piano accompaniment, Morente is joined only by pianist Javier Perianes.

Nommick’s notes begin with the fascinating observation that Lorca began as a musician and discovered that he had stronger talents as a writer, while Falla’s career path followed exactly the opposite direction. Falla was the older of the two; and, given the “crossing” of their efforts, it is not surprising that a partnership would ensue. That partnership grew out of a shared interest in the “roots” of Spanish song. In Lorca’s case those roots came from his own childhood, while Falla educated himself through published anthologies of source material from Andalusia, Murcia, Aragon, and Asturias. Lorca collected twelve of these songs under the title Canciones españolas antiguas (old Spanish songs), providing his own piano accompaniment. They were recorded for the first time in 1931, but they were not published (by the Unión Musical Española in Madrid) until 1961. (A thirteenth arrangement was published in 1964, but Encuentro includes only the original twelve.)

This Lorca collection, which concludes the album, complements the opening tracks of the much better known Siete canciones populares españolas (seven popular Spanish songs), which Falla composed in 1914. He was living in Paris and wrote them for a Spanish singer performing at the Opéra-Comique. There is some overlap between Falla’s sources and those used by Lorca; but it is very small. In the interest of this album, however, what matters is how Morente has conveyed the impression of these two composers “meeting” over a shared interest in the source material; and that makes listening to this album through from beginning to end a highly satisfying experience.

These two pieces are separated by Falla’s suite of piano arrangements of eight of the episodes from his score from the one-act ballet “El amor brujo” (love, the magician). Morente adds her voice to one of those episodes, the “Canción del fuego fatuo” (song of wildfire). This is original music, but it definitely reflects Falla interest in folk sources. Perianes gives the overall suite a deft account with a light touch that also seems to honor the folk style while also suggesting the darker qualities of the ballet’s scenario. Because this music differs in both intent and style from the two collections of folk sources, it makes for a useful “spacer” between those collections, which also happens to be engaging for its own merits.

There are too many situations in which efforts to evoke the “Spanish style” come off as sounding tired and/or clichéd. The presentation on this album is not one of them. The attentive listener will have no trouble recognizing the seriousness of purpose behind the efforts of both of the composers, and both of the performers are clearly determined to make sure that the results of those composers’ efforts are given the best possible listening experience.