Mayke Rademakers La Furia: Passion, Fury and Melancholia Enrique Granados | Joaquín Nin | Carlos Guastavino Gaspar Cassadó | Antón García Abril | Manuel de Falla Alberto Ginastera | Ástor Piazzolla Matthijs Verschoor - piano 1 Mayke Rademakers La Furia: Passion, Fury and Melancholia Enrique Granados | Joaquín Nin | Carlos Guastavino Gaspar Cassadó | Antón García Abril | Manuel de Falla Alberto Ginastera | Ástor Piazzolla Matthijs Verschoor - piano ENRIQUE GRANADOS (1867-1916) CARLOS GUASTAVINO (1912-2000) transcription by Mayke Rademakers [12] La Rosa y el Sauce 2:46 [1] Danza Española no. 5 – Andaluza 3:51 JOAQUÍN NIN (1879-1949) MANUEL DE FALLA (1876-1946) Seguida Española transcription by Maurice Maréchal [13] Vieja Castilla 1:58 Suite Popular Española [14] Murciana 1:35 [2] El paño moruno 2:08 [15] Asturiana 3:13 [3] Asturiana 2:27 [16] Andaluza 1:56 [4] Jota 3:02 [5] Nana 2:38 ÁSTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992) [6] Canción 1:27 [17] Le Grand Tango 12:05 [7] Polo 1:33 ALBERTO GINASTERA (1916-1983) ANTÓN GARCÍA ABRIL (b. 1933) transcription by Pierre Fournier transcription by Mayke Rademakers [18] Triste 3:51 [8] No por Amor, no por Tristeza 3:26 GASPAR CASSADÓ (1897-1966) total time 64:07 Suite for Cello Solo [9] Preludio-Fantasia 6:15 [10] Sardana (Danza) 3:27 [11] Intermezzo e Danza Finale 6:20 4 5 Ruud Meijer talks with Mayke Rademakers “All my life, I’ve played a lot of Spanish music, and so has my partner and duo- more lyrical and uses a lot of embellishment, while De Falla is more primitive, pianist Matthijs Verschoor,” says Mayke Rademakers. “Both of us have worked rougher. His technique shows a great deal of guitar influences: crossing hands, and studied regularly in Spain. And I spent some time immersing myself in repeating a single note. He uses that type of thing a lot, more than Granados. Buenos Aires, because I wanted to see the tango with my own eyes: how people So in that sense they all have their own style. What I mean by the similarity to perceived it, how they danced it in the streets and on public squares. I spent a lot the northern European composers is that Spanish folk music is so very strong, of time in San Telmo, the neighbourhood where the tango was born. At a certain so very imbued with culture, that it almost no longer needs to be sublimated. point we got this sense of wanting to do something with it. We had a number Schubert or Mozart used folk music too, but they often had to work with common of works on our repertoire and so we investigated how we could combine them folksy tunes. Spanish folk music has a rich history and goes back a long way.” with new pieces, music we still needed to discover, and several of our own adaptations, to produce a great CD. We found the music we were looking for. Flamenco We put together an exciting combination of Spanish and South American music. “Flamenco is seen as typically Spanish, but the music was greatly influenced In a nutshell: flamenco and tango.” by other cultures. The flamenco mode is based on the Phrygian mode, a scale introduced in Spain by the Greeks in 500 BCE. Around 700 CE the Moors - Acting out your emotions including Moroccan Berbers and Arabs - invaded Spain. Their influence was “Spanish music takes folk music as its starting point. La Furia is based on that idea. huge. Melismatic singing, or singing one syllable of text on several different This music is about the heat, the poverty, about lifestyle and passion. notes, the plaintive intonation so characteristic of flamenco singing, originated La furia literally means anger or aggression. But in Latin, the word has very with them. The Romani people, or gypsies, came to Spain around 1450 and left positive connotations. It means doing what your instinct tells you, acting with their mark on Spanish folk music. And there are African influences, which are passion, giving it your all.” evident in the complex rhythms. All in all, it is a hugely rich culture that arose from numerous sources: a real melting pot. There is the guitar music, but also “The Spanish composers have a sound of their own, of course, just like Mozart, the foot-tapping and heel-clicking dances: zapateado and taconea. You hear or Schubert, or Haydn. For example, De Falla, compared to Granados, has his these, for example, in De Falla’s handling of the piano, in a piece like Polo.” own typical style. Granados is sometimes called the Spanish Chopin. He is rather 6 7 Folk music The flamenco is ‘rustic’, from the countryside. Flamenco arose from poverty and “The Spanish national character greatly intrigues me. Spaniards are very high- never attained the sophistication of the tango. That is to say, the tango nuevo of spirited and they make music from their hearts. The music is a translation of Piazzolla. The original tango was devised around 1900 by poor immigrants who their lifestyle. Italians, for instance, have belcanto, cantabile, the smooth legato lived in the slums of Buenos Aires. They were primarily men who hung around style of singing. It is basically about beauty. And you hear this in how the brothels and bars where women worked as prostitutes. They had to pay if they language is spoken: the Italian legato versus the Spanish staccato. Music is wanted to dance with those women, and they often didn’t have the money. very closely related to language. A key figure in Spanish music in the late So what did they do: the men danced with each other to think up new steps nineteenth and early twentieth century was composer and musicologist Filipe and to impress the women. That’s how the tango started. Originally it was an Pedrell. He was an advocate of folk music and encouraged its use in classical extremely obscene dance, accompanied by flute, guitar and violin, made so music. De Falla, Granados and Albéniz - the latter unfortunately wrote nothing that they could seduce the women. Picture bodies clinging together and legs for cello - were his pupils. Under Pedrell’s influence, they reclaimed folk music. entangled. The texts were sexually tinged, even dirty. The city’s higher classes A frequently occurring form is the A-B-A structure. The dance part is very and middle class wanted nothing to do with any of this. Later it was all cleaned rhythmical, a very strong rhythm that needs to be kept in check. This is offset up a bit. The tango nuevo is no longer music to dance to, but music you take by the singing, which is highly fraught and emotional, and then we go back to pleasure in listening to.” the dance part.” This interview is used by kind permission of Dutch music magazine Luister Tango Translations: Carol Stennes/Muse Translations “The Spanish emigrants, who undertook the journey to South America to flee poverty - and who often wound up in poverty there too - took many influences with them. The tango flamenco spread from Spain to South America. And there you find many African influences - the habanera from Cuba comes to mind.” “The tango is truly South American. Although it does show some flamenco influences, the tango definitely found its own form. Perhaps the most significant difference is that the tango is ‘urban’, because it arose in Buenos Aires. 8 9 Mayke Rademakers first undertook tuition from Hungarian cellist György Schiffer, “From the very first notes of the Prelude from Bach’s First Cello Suite there is no and graduated with honours under his guidance. From the age of 16, she was escape. You are listening to one who truly understands the subject material, who a participant in the masterclasses of André Navarra at the prestigious summer fathoms the depth of Bach’s notes, and who conveys them masterfully to us” school of the Accademia Chigiana in Siena (Italy), where she won a prize for Paul Janssen (Luister *****) her promising playing. Her talents impressed Navarra such that she was invited to continue her studies with him in Vienna. This was to last for two years, after which she furthered her musical development with William Pleeth in London and (thanks to a Fulbright grant) in the US with Janos Starker. Mayke has appeared as soloist in numerous recitals, chamber music concerts, broadcasts and solo concerts in Austria (Wiener Musikverein), Spain, Italy, Germany, Norway, England (London) and the USA (Aspen Festival). In recent times, Mayke and her duo-pianist Matthijs Verschoor were awarded the silver medal by the Societé Academique Arts – Sciences-Lettres in Paris for their dedication to French music. Her previous recordings - with works by composers such as Brahms, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Bridge and recently Bach’s cello suites connected with contemporary composers & improvisations - were highly acclaimed by the international press. 10 11 Matthijs Verschoor studied in Amsterdam (MMus Sweelinck Conservatorium) and won several prizes to continue his studies in London and Rome. Among his teachers were Bart Berman, Willem Brons and John Bingham. He performed throughout Europe as recitalist and soloist with a number of orchestras and broadcast many works from Bach to Messiaen, including neglected composers like Korngold. Early in his career he started recording for RCA, Etcetera and Erasmus, works by Bach, Scarlatti, Handel, Beethoven, Chopin, Korngold (the complete sonatas), Rachmaninov and Scriabin. His playing is unanimously acclaimed by the press, calling him One of the Chosen (Luister) and A superb pianist (Gramophone). Matthijs Verschoor gave masterclasses in Italy, Germany, Spain, Scotland, Norway and England. He is Steinway Artist since 2011. 12 13 PREVIOUSLY RELEASED ON CHALLENGE CLASSICS check www.challengerecords.com