Manuel de Falla: Alma y Fuego

Spain’s folk music and international trends in modernism found a happy home in the works of Manuel de Falla. Here, Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Orchestra of Venezuela celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth and the golden jubilee of El Sistema, Venezuela’s transformative music education programme, by invigorating three of Falla’s best-known scores with almost indecent displays of passion and equally arousing projections of orchestral colour. Listen to “En los jardines” from Nights in the Gardens of Spain, where Javier Perianes’ exquisitely poised pianism sits perfectly with the rhythmic propulsion and sensuous sonorities generated by Dudamel’s band. Spanish singer Pasión Vega unleashes the authentic spirit of cante jondo, the “deep song” of Andalusian flamenco, in “Canción del fato fuego” (“Song of the will-o-the-wisp”) from the final version of El amor brujo. The “Ritual Fire Dance”, an evergreen favourite from Falla’s one-act ballet, sounds here like a rediscovered segment from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, its delivery packed with nuanced phrasing and electrifying outbursts from unison fiddles and horns. Orchestra and conductor are on top form, too, in the seductive second suite from El sombrero de tres picos, infusing the music’s dance rhythms with irresistible Latin soul and fire.