La Habanera (Piezas caracteristícas No.2)

La Conga de la media noche

Vals poetico (Valses fantásticos No.3)

Vals patetico (Valses fantásticos No.5)

Vals maravilloso (Valses fantásticos No.6)

Vals apasionado (Valses fantásticos No.1)

Ernesto Lecuona was more a Piazzolla than a Villa-Lobos or a Ginastera, a composer more for the popular market than for the concert hall. In spite of the claims that might be made on behalf of Ignacio Cervantes - or perhaps even Joaquín Nin, with whom Lecuona studied for a while - Cuba has not produced a national composer equivalent to those pioneers of Brazilian and Argentinean music. This is not because of any lack of suitable traditional material in Cuba, which has a rich heritage of both Spanish and black African culture and which has given the world such seductive dances as the habanera, the rumba, the mambo and the chachachá among many others. It is rather because, given the musical infrastructure in Cuba at the time, a major talent like Lecuona’s was more likely to be directed towards dance music, popular song and Hollywood film scores.

As a pianist himself, Lecuona wrote many short pieces that he would play in concerts given by his Orquesta Cubana, which was one of the first Latin dance bands to make a big success in the United States. Some of them, like the popular Malaguena, are obviously commercial in inspiration while others, like the stylish Ante El Escorial, clearly have classical aspirations. But the most characteristic Lecuona pieces, like the first in tonight’s selection, La Habanera, are intriguingly and deftly poised on the dividing line between those two categories. While La Habanera has a long history behind it - not least in the work of a whole generation French composers who adopted the habanera with tireless enthusiasm - the wittily scored Conga de la media noche (Midnight Conga) is a product essentially of the 1930s, when the conga succeeded the rumba as the latest dance-hall craze.

Lecuona’s waltzes are fascinating hybrids. The Vals poetico, for example, is a sentimental Parisian waltz in the outer sections and a lively Viennese number in the middle. The melancholy Vals patetico mixes Chopin and Tchaikovsky together with the café concert and develops a surprising emotional intensity in the process. If the Vals maravilloso is more charming than “marvellous” (to quote its own title) in its mixture of smooch and ballroom vigour, the Vals apasionado is an impressive example of Lecuona in classical mode and in virtuoso mood.

Gerald Larner©