Today we offer the second of the posts introducing the conductors who work or have worked with Tritó. On this occasion it is the turn of Philippe Entremont, the French pianist and conductor.
The precocious son of musicians, he had already won prizes for chamber music performance at the age of fourteen, and at sixteen he was already a professional musician. Although he never studied conducting (he says he learned while playing under the baton of the best conductors), he has led such prestigious orchestras as the Netherlands, Israel and Vienna Chamber Orchestras. He has also conducted and played with the Berlin Philharmonic, the NHK from Japan, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the New YorkPhilharmonic, the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, and the Shangai Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra. In Spain he has conducted the Orquesta de Málaga and the Cadaqués Orchestra.
That period with the Cadaqués Orchestra gave rise to the recordings on some of the albums in the collections “Solfa la redonda” and “La corxera juganera”, with musical stories for children, and which we have grouped together to make it easier to locate them by conductor, a search parameter that we are enhancing on our website in order to make it easier to use.
La caixa de joguines, by Claude Debussy: “This is the story of a toy box, where a long time ago a ballerina doll and a wooden soldier lived curled up inside. At night, when the children were asleep, the box used to open and…” So begins this work that Debussy composed thinking of his daughter Chou-Chou and all the children in the world. We now present Meirion Bowen’s adaptation of the piano original, for narrator and chamber ensemble, and related in Catalan by the soprano Mireia Casas.
Seven fables by La Fontaine: It contains Jean La Fontaine’s seven best known fables, set to music by Xavier Benguerel. Throughout the narrative, the music accompanies the text: it anticipates what is to come and illustrates the content. The instruments serve to highlight the characteristics that La Fontaine so wisely attributes to his animals: the bassoon portrays the wisdom of the Fox, the oboe, the terrible way the Mosquito stings the Lion… you can enjoy this musical tale in Spanish, narrated by Gonzalo de Castro, or in Catalan with Rosa Gàmiz
Historia de Babar: Written by Jean de Brunhoff and set to music by Francis Poulenc, the Story of Babar has been admired for many generations. The adventures of the little elephant, the death of his mother at the hands of a hunter, the discovery of the city, the old lady, his cousins Arthur and Celeste, and Babar’s coronation as king of the elephants are part of our childhood memories. As in La Fontaine’s fables, we offer this book in a Spanish version, narrated by Tristán Ulloa, and in Catalan, with the voice of the actress Àgata Roca.
This year, 2011, marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Pau Marsal i Boguñà (Terrassa, 1761 – 1839), Catalan organist, composer and cellist whose life bridged the 18th and 19th centuries.
He trained at the Montserrat choir school with Narcís Casanoves and at the age of seventeen he took up the posts of organist and chapel master at the church of the Sant Esperit in Terrassa. In addition, he completed ecclesiastical studiesand was ordained a priest. Later, he held the posts of chapel master in Ibiza and organist at the Cathedral of Palencia and the Palau de la Comtessa in Barcelona.
He composed religious music but specialised, above all, in piano and chamber works, among which one of the few string quartets by a Catalan composer from this period deserves special mention. Eight of his religious compositions are held in the archive at the Cathedral of Terrassa.
Tritó has published his Seven Sonatas, basing the edition on the manuscript M921/3, held at the Biblioteca de Catalunya under the title “Quadern de Sonates de D. Pablo Marsal” (Book of sonatas by D.Pablo Marsal.
Starting today and for several weeks, we intend to present a series of posts that introduce the conductors who have recorded on the Tritó label. Our intention is to highlight the figure of these conductors, presenting a short biography and showing you the CDs available on our shop.
Gianandrea Noseda
The first in this list is Gianandrea Noseda (Milan, 1964). He studied piano, composition and conducting in his hometown, and broadened his conducting studies under Donato Renzetti, Myung-Whun Chung and Valery Gergiev.
Gergiev invited him to be principal guest conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1997. In 1994 he won the Cadaqués Orchestra International Conducting Competition, and was later appointed Chief Conductor of the Cadaqués Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Settimana Musicali di Stresa e del Lago Maggiore Festival in Italy. In 2007, Noseda became Music Director of the Teatro Regio di Torino.
In December 2001, he was appointed Principal Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic and took up the post in September 2002, renewing his contract in 2003. In 2005 he appeared on BBC radio in several projects, conducting Beethoven’s nine symphonies in Manchester. In October 2006, Noseda extended his contract for another two years and become Chief Conductor. It is expected that the 2010-2011 season will be his last at the helm of the BBC Philharmonic and that he will be named honorary director of the orchestra.
For further information, click here to view Noseda’s complete biography on the website of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Noseda conducts both symphonic and opera works. He has made several recordings with the BBC Philharmonic on the Chandos label, and nine CDs on the Tritó label while leading the Cadaqués Orchestra.
Ruperto Chapí orn in Villena, Alicante, came from a humble family background. Thanks to the family love of music, which had been passed down through several generations, he began his musical education at a very early age. He began his playing career in his hometown as a band musician and would later go on to the Conservatorio de Madrid. There, Ruperto and his friend Tomás Bretón studied with Arrieta.
His career as a composer was benefited by the award of a first prize for composition in 1872. This success enabled him to take up residence and study for four years in Rome and Paris. Although he was interested in music for the stage from an early age (at the age of twelve he had composed the zarzuela Estrella del Bosque), it was during this time that he managed to establish himself in the lyric-dramatic genre. In this period he composed and premiered his first opera, Abel y Cain, in Madrid, and this was followed by Las naves de Cortés and Vasco Núñez de Balboa. His first piece at the Teatro Real was La hija de Jefté, a work that the composer wrote during his stay abroad and which was premiered when he was only twenty-five years old.
When he returned to Spain he consolidated himself in the zarzuela genre and composed a sizeable number of works of which the majority are included in the standard repertoire of zarzuela companies: La Tempestad, La bruja, El rey que rabió, La zarina, El tambor de granaderos, Las bravías, La revoltosa, Las hijas de Zebedeo, El milagro de la Virgen, El duque de Gandía and Curro Vargas.
Vocal works
Among his compositions for stage there are some that aroused greater interest during the last century and are still often performed.
Música clásica was one of the works in the genre of Spanish operetta that won most acclaim from the public. A peculiarity of the storyline is that it exposes the problematic relationship between zarzuela and classical music, a controversy in which the composer was directly implicated. The work was premiered in 1880 at the Teatro Comedia de Madrid. The publication of the score has been planned to mark the occasion of the centenary of the composer’s death.
La tempestad was premiered in 1882 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela. It made a considerable impact because of the elaborate orchestral treatment. It was the most important zarzuela in the decade of the 1880s and helped to establish large-scale zarzuela.
La bruja, was premiered in 1887 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid. Set in the popular atmosphere of 17th century Pamplona the work is closer to opera than zarzuela as regards its technical requirements and the length of the instrumental sections. Nevertheless, the large amount of comic numbers and scenes depicting customs and manners unquestionably gives it the characteristics of zarzuela. This may well be the vocal piece by the composer that displays the greatest Germanic influence, as much in the use of orchestral resources as in the technique used in the creation of the motifs.
Perhaps Las hijas de Zebedeo is not one of Chapi’s most transcendent works but it is extremely interesting for its content. This comic zarzuela in two acts was premiered in 1889 at the Teatro Maravillas in Madrid. The storyline revolves around the figure of Luisa whose ignorance and poor memory lead to an endless series of comic situations.
El rey que rabió, zarzuela in three acts and seven scenes, was premiered at the Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid in 1891. The libretto of this satire was accused in its time of being a plagiary of “Un roi de vacances”. Chapí and his colleagues had to deal with this type of situation fairly often. Despite the controversy the premiere of the work was the biggest success of the year in the theatre world.
La revoltosa, zarzuela in one act which was premiered at the Teatro Apolo de Madrid in 1897, was an instant success and has continued running until the present day thanks to the adaptation of the musical discourse of the libretto.
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The incorporation of stylistic resources typical of the music listened to in Madrid at the end of the 19th century was a sure-fire guarantee of success.
El puñao de rosas was premiered at the Teatro Apolo de Madrid in 1902. With a storyline that focussed on the popular atmosphere in the mountains of Cordoba, it won instant acclaim from the public. One oddity was that the librettists decided to adapt it to the language and the pronunciation of this Andalusian region in order to help reconstruct the local atmosphere.
Instrumental works
Although his music for the stage reached a wider audience Chapí also composed symphonic music and cuatro cuartetos (four chamber quartets). The composer had to cope with the public’s lack of interest in symphonic music. Nevertheless, he made transcendental contributions to the development of symphonic music and received a positive reception from the foreign public. All his instrumental works have been published by the ICCMU during the last decade and have been the subject of some very interesting recording projects such as the Brodsky Quartet’s version of the four quartets.
The composer’s first instrumental work was the overture Zanzé written in 1865. This was followed by Fantasía Morisca (Corte de Granada) composed during the same period. He also wrote a symphonic poem that he calledEscenas de capa y espada.
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The Scherzo (Combate de Don Quijote contra las ovejas) composed between 1869 and 1870 was a descriptive piece written for the orchestra of the Circo Teatro de Price. Both Chapí and Bretón were members of this orchestra and it gave then the opportunity to try out some of their own works.
The Symphony in D was written in 1877 in Paris and later premiered in Madrid following the creation of a concert society. The work was a study in orchestration written by the composer in his student days and has a clear structure based on the prevailing German models at that time.
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Los gnomos de la Alhambra was premiered in 1891 by the orchestra of the concert society. This work was followed by La marcha de recepción in 1895.
The quartets were written between 1893 and 1897 in the keys of G mayor, F mayor, D mayor and B minor. At the time, a female string quartet, La Bretoniana, was devoted to popularising the chamber music of both Chapí and Bretón, a contemporary of Chapí. The public enjoyed comparing the productions of the two composers and taking sides with one or the other.
Some examples of Ruperto Chapí’s music can be heard in recordings made by the Orquestra de la Academia del Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona. A clear and concise performance accompanied by essential liner notes in Catalan, Spanish and English.
Modern-day repercussions
Owing to a dispute over copyrights with the publisher Florencio Fiscowich (the publishers acted as middlemen between the theatres and the composers at that time), Chapí founded the Sociedad de Autores in 1899 together with other composers and librettists. Fiscowich’s aim was to have control of all the zarzuela librettos and scores and he did all in his power to achieve this goal. The composer’s flat refusal to cooperate prevented the editor from carrying out his business plan. It was then that Chapí decided it was necessary to set up an organisation that regulated composers and authors’ copyrights and he contributed his own personal store of works to put the idea into practice.
For those who are interested in learning more about the life and work of Ruperto Chapí, Luis G. Iberni has completed a detailed, basic analytical study of his figure. Another less disseminated work, but not for this reason any less interesting, is Miradas desde el Arte a la Música de Ruperto Chapí, the catalogue of the exposition held in homage to the composer in October 2008.
To mark the occasion of the centenary of the death of Ruperto Chapí, one of the most important composers in the ambit of Spanish music for the stage, several homages are being organised.
At last, the previously unpublished scores of some of the composer’s works that have been performed and included in recordings will see the light of day. As well as the recently published Scherzo, Fantasía Morisca, Polaca de Concierto, Marcha e himno de la hija de Jefte and Escenas de capa y espada and Música clásica (score and reduction) will be published. For the time being some other stage works and zarzuela reductions that performers would like to see available will remain in the pipeline.
The new recordings include live performances of El rey que rabió and Roger de Flor, on DVD and CD respectively. A CD of vocal and instrumental works recorded by the Ensamble de Madrid and a box set containing historic recordings of complete versions of zarzuelas by Chapí will also be released.
Lastly, there will be an itinerant exhibition dealing with the life and work of Chapí, which will visit Villena and Valencia among other places. The exhibition counts on musicological assessment by Javier Suarez Pajares and Victor Sanchez Sanchez.
Los Gnomos de la Alhambra [La ronda de los gnomos (Alegretto) - Conjuro. Séquito de Titania y Oberón (Andante maestoso) - La Fiesta de los espíritus. La Aurora (Alegro molto vivace)].
With the figure of the composer Xavier Montsalvatge we are launching a series of biographies of some of the most famous Spanish composers of all time, which will be published periodically in this blog.
Xavier Montsalvatge is the first because he is the publisher’s principal composer and almost the totality of his work has been published by Tritó. Montsalvatge will be followed by Isaac Albéniz in view of his evident importance on the Spanish music scene together with Enrique Granados.
You can access the series by clicking on Biographies.
Xavier Montsalvatge is one of the most representitive names from the so-called “lost generation”, between the one of the Spanish Republic and present-day composers. His work has had a large international projection and has become a reference point on the contemporary music scene.
He first gained wide spread recognition in the 1940s with a set of songs called Cinco Canciones Negras (1945); they mark the beginning of a Post-Nationalistic period that later evolved into his so-called “Antilles style” featuring West Indian/Carribean stylistic traits. This is one of the common denominators in works like the Cuarteto Indiano (1951). The Concierto Breve (1953) for piano and orchestra points to the beginning of more abstract forms. The influence of Impressionism is present in the-Sonatine pour Ivette (1960)- or the use of serial-related techniques in the following works: Cinco Invocaciones al Crucificado (1969), Laberinto (1970) for orquestra, and Sonata Concertante for cello and piano (1971).
Later the composer settled into a more eclectic style which seems to synthesize the rest of his production. This is found in his Concertos: for harp (Concierto capriccio, 1975), harpsichord (Concierto del Albayzín, 1977) and guitar (Metamorfosis de concierto, 1980) as well as the Requiem Symphony (1985), Fantasy for Guitar and Harp (1983), Sortilegis(1992) and also in Bric à Brac (1993).
Sortilegis
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He was also active in the field of Opera: El gato con botas (The cat with boots), Una voce in off (A voice in off) and Babel 46. His works have been premiered in a number of International Music Festivals such as those at Cadaqués, Castillo de Peralada and Cuenca, and his music has been performed by world-renowned musicians such as Neville Marriner, Jean Pierre Rampal, Victoria de Los Angeles, Montserrat Caballé or Barbara Hendrix and Alícia de Larrocha.
He was born in Girona on March 11, 1912, where he first studied violin. After his father’s death, in 1921, he moved to Barcelona to live with his grandfather. He continued his musical education at the Conservatory there, where studied with the violinist Francesc Costa, solfège with Lluís Millet, and composition with Enric Morera and Jaume Pahissa. He felt strongly attracted to composition at an early stage in his training. So he decided to concentrate on counterpoint, harmony and fugue and give up the idea of a performing career as a violinist. He also felt a close affinity for the ideas of the French school and he opposed the teaching of the Conservatory, under the influence of Wagner and Strauss.
Una voce in off - Prologo
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In 1933 he wrote Tres Impromptus for piano. This was the winning piece at the XII Composition Competition “Concepción Rabell i Cibils”, which was sponsored by the Patxot Foundation. He called this work his “opus 00″. Thanks to this prize, he made his first trip to Paris. There, he found some of his favorite scores: Satie’s Gymnopédies and Gnossienne, Ravel’s Sonata for violin and piano, Milhaud’s Saudades do Brazil and Poulenc’s Mouvements Pérpetuels. In 1936, he won the Felipe Pedrell Prize, sponsored by the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya) with the score Petita Suite Burlesca for violin and woodwind quartet. From then on, he began to collaborate as a music critic in the Barcelona newspaper El Matí, and starting in December 1939, he became a reviewer for the magazine Destino. In 1936, the XIV Festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music was held in Barcelona. At this event he became acquainted with the works of Europe’s leading composers: Alban Berg, Ernst Krenek and Albert Roussel, as well as other Spanish composers such as Rodolfo Halffter, Federico Elizalde, Salvador Bacarisse, Robert Gerhard, Oscar Esplà, Manuel de Falla, Pedro Sanjuán and Joaquin Turina, the so-called “Generation of the (Spanish) Republic”. Not long after that, the Spanish Civil War broke out (1936-39).
In the early 1940s, he finished two piano works: Tres Divertimentos (On Themes by Forgotten Composers) (1941) and Ritmos (1942), where he started using polytonality. Ritmos was inspired by the so-called “Casino Dances” which included a Waltz-Jota, a Schottisch (or “Chotis” as it was called in Spain and an especially popular dance in Madrid), an Americana” (the dance that went with the habanera) or a Sardana (a typical Catalan dance). With this work, he began an especially productive period in his career.
At this time, he also developed close friendships with other well-known Catalan composers Manuel Blancafort and Frederic Mompou, as with Manuel Valls and Xavier Turull. And he also met the dancers Yvonne Alexander, Paul Goubé, from the Ballet Companies in Paris and Montecarlo, and Joan Magriñà, for whom he would write small choreographical compositions like Romance de los celos, Pastoral, Capricho, Estudio, La Venus De Elne and Barcelona blues -his first attempt at composing in jazz style. Through Yvonne Alexander Montsalvatge met his future wife, Elena Pérez de Olaguer. They married in 1947 and had two children: Xavier and Yvette.
At the beginning of the 1940’s, he started teaching music theory at the Acadèmia Marshall in Barcelona, named after its founder Frank Marshall (1883-1959) who had studied with Enric Granados and continued the Granados school of piano playing. On 18 March 1945 in Barcelona, the soprano Mercè Plantada and the pianist Pere Vallribera gave the first performance of Montsalvatge’s Cinco Canciones Negras (1945), for soprano and piano; shortly afterwards the orchestral version was also premiered. This group of songs is one of his masterpieces and the clearest example of the “Antilles style” or what might be termed as “Spanish Colonial Nationalism” that characterized many of his works. This style alludes to the Spanish colonies in North and South America that were lost at the end of the XIXth century, with the Spanish-American War (1898); it influenced Catalan folk music from that time onwards introducing the well-known “habaneras” that Xavier Montsalvatge learned from fishermen on the Costa Brava. This material was collected and compiled in the Álbum de Habaneras and published along with other contributions by the writer Néstor Luján and the painter Josep Maria Prim (1948). In 1948, he premierd in his first opera El gato con botas (1946) at the Liceu, the Opera House in Barcelona, on a text by Néstor Luján. A year later he won the special prize for his Sinfonía Mediterránea (1948), in a Composition Competition sponsored by the Conservatory in Barcelona. This Symphony was first played in what was then Barcelona’s main Concert Hall, the Palau de la Música Catalana with the Barcelona City Orchestra, Eduardo Toldrà conducting. In this period, he came into contact with dancers from Colonel De Basil’s Russian Ballets and the Marqués de Cuevas Dance Company when they perfomed at the Opera in Barcelona the Gran Teatrre del Liceu. These two troupes kept the creative spirit of the great Diaghilev alive.
Cinco canciones negras:
Cuba dentro de un piano
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Canción de cuna para dormir a un negrito
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In 1951 he composed another important work in his inimitable West-Indian Style: the Cuarteto Indiano, which was awarded the Samuel Ros Prize. In the 1950s, he also wrote the Poema Concertante for violin and orchestra (1951), dedicated to the violinist Henry Szering who premiered it on 22 March 1953 with the Barcelona City Orchestra, conducted by Eduard Toldrà. The Concierto Breve for piano and orchestra, from the same period (1953) is dedicated to the pianist Alicia de Larrocha; she first played it with the Barcelona Orchestra conducted by Louis de Froment. Another score from this period are the four ballet movements for orchestra Calidoscopio, which was awarded the Extraordinary Prize by the Conservatory in Barcelona.That same year, he was accepted as a member of the International Society of Contemporary Music (SIMC), and shortly afterwards, was named secretary of the Comission in charge of promoting the International Music Festival at S’Agaró. In 1958, he won the Oscar Esplà Prize for the orchestral work Partita 1958 as well as the Lluís Millet Prize, sponsored by the Orfeó Català to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Palau de la Música, for the score Cant Espiritual (1958) for mixed choir and orchestra. These works reflect a Neo-Classicism that distinguishes them from earlier periods. During these years he was correspondant for the magazine Música.
In 1960s, his musical creativity reached a fully mature stage. Several instrumental works that came to be considered masterpieces within his overall output were composed during this period. In 1962 the Gran Teatre del Liceu premiered his second opera, Una voce in off, a deeply dramatic work. The pianist Gonzalo Soriano premiered a work that Xavier Montsalvatge dedicated to him: Sonatine pour Yvette, one of the most brilliant piano pieces in the contemporary repertory with clear post-impressionistic influences. He also premiered an orchestral piece, Desintegración Morfológica de la Chacona de Bach (Morphological Desintegration of the Bach Chaconne) (1962), that was conducted by Rafael Ferrer with the Barcelona City Orchestra. In 1966 he composed a musical story for children Viatge a la Lluna (Trip to the Moon) on a text by Josep Maria Espinàs and in 1967 Xavier Montsalvatge composed his third and final opera Babel 46, on a libretto he wrote himself. Finally, in 1969, he premiered his work for soprano and instrumental ensemble Cinco Invocaciones al Crucificado for the Semana de Música Religiosa in Cuenca. That same year, the French government distinguished him as Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et de Lettres. During the same period, he continued his journalistic activity as a music critic for the newspaper La Vanguardia and as a director of the review Destino de Barcelona, until 1975.
In 1970 he became professor of composition at the Conservatory in Barcelona, the old Music School where he had studied in his youth. He was appointed director of the Conservatory in 1978. In the seventies, he composed the scores Laberinto (1970) for orchestra on commission by the International Music & Dance Festival in Granada; the score for flute and piano Serenata a Lídia de Cadaqués (1970) was premiered at the International Music Festival in Cadaqués. He also composed his concerto for harp, Concerto Capriccio (1975), first perfomed by the harpist Nicanor Zabaleta and the Orquesta Nacional de España (ONE) conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos; the Concierto del Albayzín for harpsichord and orchestra, premiered by Rafael Puyana with the Spanish Radio & Television Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique García Asensio; the Metamorfosis de Concierto for guitar and orchestra, was premiered by Narciso Yepes and the Orquesta Nacional de España conducted by Antoni Ros Marbà and was awarded the Prize “Ciutat de Barcelona”.
Concierto del Albayzín
Con spirito
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Adagietto
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Moderato – Allegretto
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In chamber music, he composed the Sonata Concertante (1971) for cello and piano, presented in the Decena de Música Festival which was held in Toledo; and the work Micro-Rapsodia (A la memoria de Pau Casals) (1976). In 1973 he premiered the work for soprano and orchestra Hommage a Manolo Hugué with Victoria de Los Angeles and the Spanish Radio & Television Symphony Orchestra conducted by Odón Alonso; and, finally, the orchestral work Reflexus-Obertura first performed in 1973 at a monographic concert in the XI International Music Festival of Barcelona.
During the eighties, he was distinguished with the Creu de Sant Jordi (Saint George’s Cross) of the Generalitat de Catalunya in recognition of his creative trajectory (1983); he received the Premio Nacional de Música (1985) and was invested Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The world premiere of his Fantasy for guitar and harp (1983) took place at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., played by the guitarist Narciso Yepes and by the harpist Nicanor Zabaleta. He also composed the Fanfarria para la alegría de la paz (1984) in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Coronation of King Juan Carlos I of Spain; this was first performed by the Spanish Radio & Television Symphony Orchestra Orquesta conducted by the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1986, Xavier Montsalvatge premiered the Requiem Symphony commissioned by the Spanish Ministry of Culture as a celebratory piece for the European Year of Music. The following year, he premiered a new piano piece A Page for Rubinstein (Ballade for the left hand) commissioned by the Isaac Albéniz Foundation. In 1988, the International Music Festival of Santander premiered his work for violin, cello and piano Dialogue with Mompou, which became the second mouvement of his Trio (1986). He also published a volume of memoires: Papers autobiogràfics (Autobiographical papers). The City Hall of Girona named a street after him and in 1989 it was created the International Prize for Piano Xavier Montsalvatge.
Interview with Xavier Montsalvatge
He was always a very active man practically up until the end of his life, composing a large number of scores that have been widely disseminated. Most of his works have been published and many of them have been recorded on CD. Besides all this, we should mention his third opera Babel 46 which had its world premiered at the Music Festivals of Cadaqués, Castell de Peralada and Cuenca (1994); Folia daliniana (1995); Cinc epigrames de Manolo Hugué (1998) for mixed choir; Recóndita armonía, for piano and string orchestra (1952-1999); for piano solo Quatre diàlegs amb el piano, Cinc ocells en llibertat (1997), Improviso epilogal (2001); Al·legoria a l’entorn de l’Elegía eterna de Granados for soprano and string orchestra (2000); Sinfonietta-concerto for flute soloist, string orchestra, piccolo, harp and percussion (2001).
Xavier Montsalvatge was decorated with many prizes. Among others, there are the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona (1970), the Creu de Sant Jordi de la Generalitat de Catalunya (1983), the Premi Nacional de Música de la Generalitat de Catalunya (1991), Premi Nacional de Cultura de la Generalitat (1997), Premio Reina Sofía – Fundación Ferrer Salat (1992), Premio Jacinto e Inocencio Guerrero (1992) and most recently the Premio Iberoamericano Tomás Luís de Victoria (1998).
Other distinctions include a Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres from the French government, Medal for Artistic Merit from the Spanish Ministry of Culture, Gold Medal from Barcelona’s City Hall, Gold Medal from the Generalitat de Catalunya and Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts (Beaux Arts).
He was also a member of the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Sant Jordi, Honorary member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes Isabel de Hungría in Seville, Correspondiente de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes Ntra. Sra. de las Angustias in Granada, member of the New York Hispanic Society and the Société Fryderyka Chopina in Warsaw.
Xavier Montsalvatge died in Barcelona on May 7, 2002.
Fernando Sor (Barcelona, 1778 – Paris, 1839) was undoubtedly one of the most internationally renowned Spanish composers. Known mainly for his guitar music, Sor’s orchestral works have often been ignored. In recent years, studies by several musicologists have re-established his reputation as a composer of orchestral, ballet and other works, and as one of the leading composers in Spanish Classicism and pre-Romanticism.
Tritó has spent years restoring some of these scores and the Cadaqués Orchestra, under the direction of Sir Neville Marriner, has now recorded a selection. This is the first CD devoted entirely to Sor’s orchestral works, as well as the first recording of some of the works included.
A previously unpublished symphony by Josep Pons (1770-1818) has been included in volume 6 of the Collection “Compositors valencians”, published by Tritó in conjunction with the Generalitat Valenciana. It has been classified as No. 10 so as to respect the numbering of the catalogue initiated years ago by Joám Trillo and José López-Calo.
The task of the publication of this symphony in A major fell to Josep Dolcet, who located the manuscript in the Biblioteca Històrica of Madrid City Council, among the archives that came from the old Teatro de la Cruz.
It was found together with other overtures and symphonies by Pons and by Sor (published and recorded), Pablo del Moral and Francisco Javier Moreno, and also works by Haydn, Pleyel and Mozart, and lesser-known European composers (Rosetti, Winter, Witt, Méhul, Paër, Paisiello, Salieri, Sarti, Spontini, Mercadante, etc.)
In fact, this is the first time symphonies and overtures by Pons have been found in archives coming from theatres, and this shows that apart from the use of his music in religious acts, which implies its conservation in cathedral archives, it also sounded in concert halls or as the introduction to theatre works performed at the beginning of the 19th century.
The edition also includes an updated biographical study of Josep Pons, carried out by the musicologist and conductor Ramón Ramírez i Beneyto, author of a doctoral thesis on this composer.
“Fantasia for Tuba and piano” by Bartolomé Pérez Casas, probably one of the earliest works ever written for these two instruments, is now available from the Tritó catalogue. The project to publish this landmark work for the tuba entailed a major research effort by both the publisher and reviser Miguel Moreno Guna, from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, to find the composer’s original manuscript as well as the historical documentation essential for the best possible recreation of the score.
Bartolomé Pérez Casas was a leading figure in Spanish music in the first half of the twentieth century, as director of the Royal Lancers Corps Band, professor of harmony at the Royal Conservatory in Madrid, founder and director of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Madrid and director of the Spanish National Orchestra between 1942 and 1947. His knowledge of wind instruments and his music teaching skills make this an essential piece in the tuba repertoire.
In line with our continuing commitment to early music, Tritó announces the release of the eighth volume of the collection Compositors Valencians, dedicated to the composer José Pradas (1689-1757), who played a major role in the history of the cathedral Metropolitana in Valencia.
This volume, published with the Institut Valencià de la Música, includes three villancicos (La tierra llora afligida, Cantad serafines, Trono sagrado de luces), just a small sample of Pradas’s extensive work. The musicologist Marian Rosa Montagut edited the works and wrote the introductory study.
Today we offer the second of the posts introducing the conductors who work or have worked with Tritó. On this occasion it is the turn of Philippe Entremont, the French pianist and conductor.
Fernando Sor
In line with our continuing commitment to early music, Tritó announces the release of the eighth volume of the collection Compositors Valencians, dedicated to the composer 
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