The rebirth of Xavier Montsalvatge

Posted by Soledad Sánchez Bueno on February 2, 2012  |  Leave a comment

This year marks the centenary of the birth of one of the most esteemed composers of our editorial house, the prolific Xavier Montsalvatge.

Numerous events will be performed during 2012 to honor his career and work.

TRITÓ joins tribute with a double-disc reissue released by our label in 2002. It brings together the masterpieces of the composer’s catalog (not the most performed): Sortilegis, Sinfonietta-Concerto, Metamorfosi de concert, Impromptu en el Generalife, Hommage à Manolo Hugué and the Concierto del Albayzín.

At that time, the album had been conceived not only as a tribute to the composer in his ninetieth year, but above all as a gift from a group of friends to the Maestro. It brought together many of the ideas that had emerged in conversations we had with Xavier Montsalvatge during his life.  Llorenç Caballero

This project would have been unthinkable without the presence of some of the great musicians of our time as Alicia de Larrocha, James Martin, Josep Colom and the Cadaqués Orchestra with Gianandrea Noseda as conductor.

Today our purpose is more ambitious, we want to help the music to appreciate and claim Montsalvatge from other countries, especially across the Atlantic.

Our conductors (V): Alejandro Posada

Posted by Cristina Martí on August 31, 2011  |  Leave a comment

The subject of this article is the Colombian conductor Alejandro Posada. The inclusion of this conductor in the series “Our conductors” is a special case because Posada is the principal guest conductor of the Orquesta de Castilla y León, an ensemble that has itself worked closely on several occasions with the Cadaqués Orchestra in different concerts and on various recordings for the Tritó label, such as those we present today: two albums well worth listening to, among other reasons thanks to the eminent soloists who play on each one, the flutist Clara Andrada and the violinist Ara Malikian.

Alejandro Posada has been principal guest conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León since 2002 – you can see the details of his extensive career on his web page – and has done important artistic work for many years all over Europe and Latin America. He has conducted more than sixty orchestras in over twenty countries. In Europe he has conducted a long list of ensembles including the Belgrade Philharmonic, Sarajevo Philharmonic and Chamber Orchestra, Lower Austria Symphony Orchestra, Pro-Arte, the Vienna Residenzorchester, Szeged Symphony Orchestra from Hungary, the Vienna Mozart and the Mitteldeutsche Kammerphilharmonie (Berlin). Elsewhere, he has conducted ensembles such as the Washington and the Taiwan symphony orchestras and the major orchestras of Central and South America, where in addition to having conducted all the Colombian orchestras he collaborates frequently with the Simon Bolivar (Venezuela), Orquestas Sinfónicas Nacional and Concepción (Chile), the Orquestra de Costa Rica, the Nacional from El Salvador, and many others.

In Spain he has conducted important symphonic ensembles on numerous occasions. These include the Sinfónica de Galicia, Sinfónica de Tenerife, Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Nacional de España, the Ciudad de Barcelona y Nacional de Cataluña,  the Sinfónica de Madrid and, as mentioned above, the Orquesta de Castilla y León.

One of the recordings made by Alejandro Posada for Tritó is the CD titled “Spanish Romantic Violin Concertos“, with pieces by Bretón and Monasterio performed by the brilliant and prestigious Lebanese violinist Ara Malikian. This CD is part of a project that Malikian himself initiated in conjunction with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León to revive and record concertos for violin and orchestra by Spanish composers. By the way, this recording is specially recommended by the reviews Audioclásica and Scherzo

The second recording has resulted in one of the most sold CDs in the Tritó shop: the flute concertos by Arturo Márquez, Xavier Montsalvatge and Joan Albert Amargós, performed by the flutist Clara Andrada. Each of these works has its own story: Montsalvatge’s concerto was composed for the current conductor of the Cadaqués Orchestra Javier Martín, Amargós adapted the original version of his concerto for recorder to the transverse flute, specially for Clara, and the piece by Márquez was a contribution suggested by Alejandro Posada himself. You can read a review in Spanish of this CD here.

• Listen to audio samples from the violín concertos conducted by Alejandro Posada
• Listen to audio samples from the flute concertos conducted by Alejandro Posada

Our conductors (IV). Sir Neville Marriner

Posted by Cristina Martí on August 17, 2011  |  Leave a comment

In this fourth entry we continue our overview of the conductors who have recorded with Tritó. On this occasion, we call to mind Sir Neville Marriner, who has been principal guest conductor of the Cadaqués Orchestra since 1992.

Sir Neville Marriner studied violin at the Royal College of Music in London and the Paris Conservatoire. In 1949 he joined the Martin String Quartet and founded the Jacobean Ensemble with Thurston Dart and the Virtuoso String Trio, and worked with legendary directors such as Toscanini, Furtwängler, Cantelli and Karajan.

In 1959 he founded the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, where he was concertmaster and later chief conductor. He has also conducted the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra.

He has been decorated twice for his work on behalf of music: he received a CBE in 1979 and was knighted in 1985. In addition, the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields with Sir Neville Marriner has received the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement in recognition of their accomplishments as concert performers.

Sir Neville Marriner’s most prolific period in terms of recordings with the Cadaques Orchestra and Tritó was when he was chief conductor, releasing albums with works by Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga, with the voice of Ainhoa Arteta, such as the Obertura de los esclavos felices, works by Fauré and Gounod, and a CD with three fantastic compositions by Stravinski, Montsalvatge and Prokofiev (Pulcinella Suite, Sortilegis and the Classical Symphony respectively). In addition, he has recorded Pulcinella in its full version in a concert for which David Nel·lo wrote and narrated a tale of imagination set in the city of Tifna, with princesses, good and bad characters, and elephants.

Sir Neville Marriner has conducted works by Mozart with the Cadaqués Orchestra on numerous occasions, resulting in three albums: the Sinfonias concertantes, a double CD with four concertos, for flute (K.313), for oboe (K.314), for clarinet (K.622) and for bassoon (K.191, and, lastly, the Concertos 1 and 2 for flute and the Concerto for flute and harp on a CD which has just been re-released with a more modern design. On this latter album, the solo flutist is Jaime Martín, currently chief conductor of the Cadaqués Orchestra, and the harpist is Bryn Lewis. In the case of another great composer, Beethoven, Sir Neville Marriner has recorded his Symphonies 1,2,5 and 6 with Tritó on two fantastic CDs.

Last but not least, the three Sinfonias Concertantes by Danzi, Fernando Sor’s Overtures and Symphonies and the works of the contemporary composer Joan Guinjoan, Sincrotó and Alba, are the three other recordings that the period when the Cadaqués Orchestra performed under the baton of the brilliant English conductor has left for posterity.

Our conductors III: Vasily Petrenko

Posted by Cristina Martí on May 3, 2011  |  Leave a comment

Vasily Petrenko, (St Petersburg, Russia, 1976) is, at the time of writing, the youngest conductor – and perhaps a sign of his youth is that he keeps a blog where he frequently writes his personal impressions, and not a webpage – ever to work with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he made his debut as a conductor in 2004 and with whom he has a relationship that could be described as “special”, since it has been stated that he is responsible for the economic and popular revival of the orchestra. In addition, he is principal conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and principal guest conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León.

In Spain, he has also led the Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, with whom, just a short time ago, he conducted works by Milhaud, Schumann and Tchaikovsky in the island orchestra’s 14th concert of the season. In addition, he has worked on several occasions with the Cadaqués Orchestra and made various recordings as a result, one of them alongside another of our conductors, Gianandrea Noseda, who opened this series of posts presenting the conductors who have led the Cadaqués Orchestra. The recording in question is titled “Poèmes d’amour-Evocación-Triana-Lavapiés”, a CD with works by Isaac Albéniz and Jesús Rueda.

The other recordings made by Petrenko and the Cadaqués Orchestra are the musical story “Peter and the Wolf”, with the text narrated in two language versions, Catalan (with the voice of Jordi Sánchez) and Spanish (with the actress Leonor Watling), and the works La Vida Secreta, Cançons de carrer and Suite no. 4, op. 61 “Mozartiana” by Guinovart, Morera and Tchaikovsky, respectively.

Our Conductors II: Philippe Entremont

Posted by Cristina Martí on March 31, 2011  |  Leave a comment

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 York Philharmonic, 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.

Our conductors (I): Gianandrea Noseda

Posted by Cristina Martí on February 9, 2011  |  1 Comment

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.

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.

Complete discography at The Shop at Tritó.es >

Gianandrea Noseda conducts Brahms

Posted by Leticia Martin on December 29, 2008  |  Leave a comment

The Cadaqués Orchestra conducted by Gianandrea Noseda presents the complete symphonies of Johannes Brahms in a double CD.

This symphonic cycle, despite being one of the least extensive, is one of the keys to understanding the transition from classicism to romanticism and orchestral music from the 19th century to the present day.

The ODC ensemble, smaller than usual for this repertoire, becomes a brilliant tool in the hands of the Italian conductor, who knows every nuance of the score and brings out the best in each of the musicians with a splendid labour that results in masterly performances.

Simphnony no.1 Un poco sostenuto – Allegro

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Simphnony no.2 Allegro non troppo

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

All the symphonies were recorded at the Auditorio de Zaragoza after a tour of various Spanish cities.

The Orquesta de Cadaqués accepted the challenge of making the first recording of this complete set by a Spanish ensemble, with a magnificent result that is on a par with the key recordings of this repertoire. A recording that was an important undertaking in both its artistic and technical aspects and which will surprise and please both the connoisseurs if this repertoire and those who are listening to it for the first time.

Simphnony no.2 Adagio non troppo

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Simphnony no.3 Andante

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Simphnony no.3 Allegro

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Further information at www.trito.es

Fernando Sor, Overtures and Symphonies

Posted by Marcel Soleda on November 17, 2008  |  Leave a comment

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.

The CD, which we hope will give Sor the respect he deserves as a composer of orchestral works, features the following: the overtures to the ballets Hercule et Omphale, Alphonse et Leonora and Cendrillon, and the melodrama La Elvira portuguesa, and his Symphonies No. 1 in C major, No. 2 in E flat major and No. 3 in F major.

“El Puerto” by Albéniz orchestrated by Jesús Rueda

Posted by Cristina Martí on July 30, 2008  |  Leave a comment

This year’s Peralada Festival provides the setting for the Cadaqués Orchestra’s premiere of the fourth orchestration, done by the Madrid composer Jesús Rueda, of Albéniz’s Suite Iberia.
Suite Iberia is one of the best-known works by Isaac Albéniz. Originally written for piano, its scenes of Hispanic references have been orchestrated several times, but this is the first adaptation for classical orchestra. Rueda’s profound feeling for the music of Albéniz has produced orchestrations of Triana, Evocación, Lavapiés and now El Puerto that demonstrate tonal and musical richness.
In addition to El Puerto, the Peralada Festival concert, this 5 August, also features Evocación, under the direction of maestro Neville Marriner, principal guest conductor of the Cadaqués Orchestra.

Cadaqués Orchestra to the Porta Ferrada Festival in Sant Feliu de Guixols

Posted by Cristina Martí on July 30, 2008  |  Leave a comment

Contemporary music, audiovisual art and universal stories come together at the Festival de la Porta Ferrada in Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Gerona) as the Cadaqués Orchestra Ensemble presents Cinco Fábulas de La Fontaine. To complement the live music, by the composer Xavier Benguerel, and narration, by the actor Lluís Soler, Tritó commissioned an animated film by Pere Puig to be shown simultaneously in order to bring the fables, their characters and metaphors to life for spectators of all ages.