Composers: Obradors, Granados, Turina, deFalla, Montsalvatge, and Rossini
Performers: Joyce DiDonato (mezzo), Julius Drake (piano)
Label: Eloquentia France
Released: 8 January 2007
Number of Discs: 1
ASIN: B000K15UAE
Tracks
01. El Vito (Canciones clasicas espanolas – Fernado J. Obradors
02. La mi sola, Laureola
03. Al amor
04. Corazon, porque pasais ?
05. El majo celoso
06. Con amores, la mi madre
07. Del cabello mas sutil
08. Chiquitita la Novia
09. Elegia eterna- Tonadillas (Enrique Granados)
10. La maja dolorosa I – Tonadillas
11. La maja dolorosa II – Tonadillas
12. La majo dolorosa III – Tonadillas
13. No lloreis, ojuelos – Canciones amatorias
14. Dedicatoria (Poema en forma de canciones – Joaquin Turina)
15. Nunca olvida
16. Cantares
17. Los dos miedos
18. las locas por amor
19. El pano moruno (Siete canciones populares espanolas- Manuel de Falla)
20. Seguidilla murciana
21. Asturiana
22. Jota
23. Nana
24. Cancion
25. Polo
26. Cuba denttro de un piano (Cinco canciones negras – Xavier Montsalvate)
27. Punto de Habanera
28. Chevere
29. Cancion de cuna para dormir a un negrito
30. Canto negro
31. Canzonetta spagnuola (Rossini)
“Julius Drake and I celebrate the miracle completion of our Spanish disc, PASIÓN!”
from Joyce DiDonato’s blogspot, 18 june 2006
What critics say
Bay Area Reporter, April, 2007
Bright light
With ¡Pasión! (Eloquentia), DiDonato shines a bright light on a dark corner of the song repertory, the turn-of-the-last-century Spanish song, with the kaleidoscopically colored musical personality she brings to everything she sings.
Enchantment informs her performance of that languid, sensual love song, [Del cabello mas sutil] sung with the full richness of her beguiling instrument. Still more astonishing is the huge expressive range of the eight-song set, Canciones clasicas espanolas. DiDonato responds to the material like a born Spaniard, with color, snap, and a suave feeling for rhythm made even more compelling by her superb sense of line and dynamic shading.
Three other composers of the 30 songs here – Enrique Granados, Joaquin Turina, and Manuel de Falla – are even more familiar, but the likelihood of anyone’s having heard their delectable songs in recital is scandalously slight. Even so, the revelation is the five-song set, Cince canciones negras, by the little-known Xavier Monstsalvatge (1912-2002). The material is arresting and, nominally exploring the color black, uses all its hues across a daunting range of melodies, harmonies and rhythms, to all of which DiDonato and her superb accompanist Julius Drake respond like dancers in lock-step.
Her encore, Rossini’s dizzyingly accelerating “Canzonetta spangnola,” sung to enchant, not impress, is the perfect fillip.
Gramophone, October, 2007
¡Pasión!, Eloquentia
DiDonato relishes the richness of her voice and spins some gorgeous, purely vocal moments in Falla’s Seven Popular Spanish Songs. She is aided by deliciously playful accompaniment from Julius Drake. [They] achieve a stylish intensity in Turina’s Poema en forma de canciones. DiDonato’s [encore] is a Rossini Canzonetta spagnuola, full of sensuous teasing and building up to an accelerating crescendo in which – and this is the highest praise I can bestow – she did make me think of Supervia.
William R. Braun, Operanews.com, June 2007
When Philip L. Miller’s The Ring of Words, an invaluable guide to song texts, was first published, in 1963, the only Spanish songs to merit inclusion were the most familiar works of Falla and Granados. Today, Spanish repertoire is no longer on the fringes, and Joyce DiDonato’s new album is less a pioneering effort than a snapshot of the current situation.
Falla and Granados are represented, of course, but the centerpiece is Joaquin Turina’s Poema en Forma de Canciones. We like to believe that there must be plenty of masterworks waiting to be plucked from undeserved obscurity. It’s probably not true, but the Turina certainly qualifies. A set of killer poems by Ramón de Campoamor (whose name you will not find anywhere in the CD packaging), the cycle is something of a love story in reverse, ending with a paean to Venus. DiDonato’s performance of the finale, budding excitement turning to abandon, is excellent. In the earlier songs, she shows how both hope and despair can blossom unexpectedly, and she differentiates nicely between the two ostensibly similar stanzas of “Los dos miedos.” Julius Drake gets an entire, effective movement for solo piano, though his interpretation of the marking “destacado” is not the common one.
The lullaby movement of Xavier Montsalvatge’s Cinco Canciones Negras is a familiar item on recitals, but the rest of the cycle is less so. (Even DiDonato herself elected not to offer the whole thing when she sang her most recent New York recital.) The opening habanera is an entire Kurt Weill-esque scene, well controlled by the performers, and the sickening story of “Chévere” brushes up against an almost nonsensical finale. The second song, “Punto de Habanera,” along with two of the Obradors selections, shows DiDonato at her best. It’s the sound of someone with both a complete identification with a song and the means to communicate it, and it’s the sound of someone who loves to be onstage.
The performances of the ubiquitous Falla songs are something different. They raise the question of whether it is possible to know pieces too well, to become too tempted to fool with them simply because one can. DiDonato probably crosses over the line in the first song and merely flirts with it in the others. These songs are often heard to good effect with guitar accompaniment, and they can sound arty with piano. Drake’s performance, which brings to mind the word “housebroken,” is still preferable to the way other pianists have torn the music to shreds. Drake is one of the finest pianists we have for Schumann, Schubert, Britten and much else, and he finds a nice “vocal” quality for his interjections in the Obradors “El Majo Celoso.” Thus his distortions of some of Montsalvatge’s rhythms, from an artist who can play almost anything, are a puzzlement.
But the album is a success. DiDonato’s ability to feel the unarticulated beats beneath the syncopations, to find a new reason to sing “Ay!” every time it arises, and to pop out bright high As all practically guarantee her standing as a fine interpreter of this repertoire.