De Falla: El Amor Brujo, Nights in the Gardens of Spain & The Three-Cornered Hat Suite No. 2

A document of the high-octane sound for which the Philadelphia Orchestra was famous under its great 20th-century conductors Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski, this recording features both of them in vividly Hispanic music by de Falla. Stokowski’s contribution is the ballet score El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician), which he delivers with his trademark sparkling showmanship—assisted by the mezzo Shirley Verrett in characterful voice. The rest is Ormandy—there’s a sultry, shimmering account of Noches en los Jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain), an almost-piano concerto, with the young Philippe Entremont as soloist. And to finish, a powerhouse performance of dances from El Sombrero de Tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat) in which the high jinks of this comic ballet about geriatric lechery gets technicolour treatment.