Danzas Fantásticas, Op.22

One of the more valuable pieces of advice given by one composer to another was addressed by Albéniz to Turina in 1907 when the former suggested to the latter that he should consider turning to Spanish folk music for his material. Up to that point Turina had seen himself as a quite different kind of composer. He was studying with d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and had suppressed the Spaniard in him to become a second-generation disciple of César Franck. But it was on hearing Turina’s obediently cyclic Piano Quintet, Op.1, that Albéniz realised that the Schola ethos represented no kind of future for a young man from Seville and concluded that he should widen his horizons. Although it was only after his return to Spain in 1914 that Turina was able to draw with full-scale conviction on his musical roots, his experiences in Paris in the meantime - not least his encounters with the Spanish-friendly music of Debussy and Ravel - had taken him a long way towards that situation.

The Danzas Fantásticas were written in 1920, five years before La Oración del torero, the other of Turina’s two most successful scores. Far more familiar in a later orchestral arrangement, they are scarcely less attractive in the piano version: the colour of the work derives not so much from the “fantastic” element, which is only intermittently applied, as from the idiomatic authenticity of the dance material. This is not to say that there is no sign of Turina’s Parisian background. It is to be heard in the impressionistic introduction to the first movement, Exaltación (“Exaltation”), in the distant sounds of approaching festive activity, and in the way - just as in Chabrier’s España, which has an unmistakable presence here - the lively triple-time rhythms of the jota are offset by more languorous melody. The receding echoes of these three features in the slower closing section are most poetically registered.

Although Turina is known above all as an exponent of “sevillanismo,” only the third of the Danzas fantásticas actually derives from that part of Spain. The jota comes from Aragon and the zortzico, which is the basis of the next movement, Ensueño (“Reverie”), belongs to the Basque country. The quintuple metre of the zortzico is one feature of Spanish music that few French composers have adopted, and not many Spaniards either, although there is a notable example in Albéniz’s España of 1890. Turina uses the zortzico sparingly here, alternating the charmingly sinuous dance melody and its 5/8 ostinato with slower material in 6/8, to which latter he awards if not the last word then certainly the more expressive role.

“Let’s forget those traditional castanets,” said Turina of the last of the Danzas fantásticas, “and let us not look for our material in those artificial festivals that are put on for the English in Andalusia every spring. Orgía is set in the humble and modest patio of a little house somewhere in Seville.” If it is difficult to reconcile the idea of an “orgy” with a patio of a house in Seville, the answer must be that the Spanish “orgía” doesn’t mean quite the same thing. It is true that the opening theme lacks nothing in vigour and that it sheds all inhibitions. In the episodes between its reappearances, however, in the middle of the piece and in a quicker tempo towards the end, it makes way for lighter colouring, wittier rhythms and more delicate melody - one example of which is briefly recalled in the closing bars.