7 Canciones clásicas españolas

Con amores, la mi madre

Corazón porqué pasáis

El amor

Del cabello más sutil (Dos cantares populares)

Consejo

Trova (Dos cantares populares)

Coplas de curro dulce

The absence of Fernando Obradors from the annals of the higher musicology - there is no mention of him in The New Grove for example - is even more surprising than that of Salvador Moreno. Although he was a largely self-taught composer, he was by no means an amateur musician and, as the music director of orchestras in Barcelona and elsewhere, not exactly low-profile either. Of his orchestral works only the Poema de la Jungla seems to have any currency (in a recording by his former Orquesta Filarmonica de Gran Canaria) but his four volumes of songs with piano, the Canciones clásicas españolas, have always had their adherents. They are particularly attractive to those in search of material that is authentically idiomatic while avoiding, on the one hand, the aggressive sevillanismo of Joaquín Turina and, on the other hand, the neo-classical refinement of Obradors’s great Catalan predecessor Enrique Granados.

Con amores, la mi madre (to words by the 15th-century poet Juan Anchieta) is unmistakably Spanish from the beginning, modestly written though it is. Dreamily suggestive in the chromatic harmonies accompanying the third stanza, it is most effective in its change from minor to major in the closing bars. An accomplished pianist himself, Obradors was resourceful in writing entertaining piano parts even if, as in Corazón, porqué pasáis (to an anonymous 17th-century poem) they derive much of their colouring from guitar figuration. The short piano interlude in the middle of Al Amor (to words by the 17th-century poet Cristóbal Castillejo) is an appropriately exuberant counterpart to the provocative vocal line.

Del cabello mas sutíl, El vito

The Dos Cantares populares - separated here by Consejo, a setting of contrastingly literary words by Cervantes - are two folk-song arrangements, Del cabello más sutil drawing its expressive melodic line over gently arpeggiated harmonies in the piano part, Trova (from the Estramadura) alternating a pair of short but lyrically melodious phrases in the vocal line with picturesque guitar episodes in the piano part. But for local colour the most extravagant song in this group, if not the whole collection, is the couplets dedicated to the sweet life, Chiquittita la novia, with its swaggering vocal line, its vigorous flamenco decorations, its brilliant instrumental introduction and ending, all offset by a graceful piano interlude in the middle.

Gerald Larner©2001