Classic crossovers through the ages.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Jorge Federico Osorio Mexican Piano Music - Carlos Mena--Al Ayre Espanol La Cantada Espanola en America - Orquesta Sinfonica de Guayaquil Musica Academica Ecuatoriana - Orquesta Sinfonica de Guayaquil En Vivo - Gerardo Dirie Waiting For the Sound - Benjamin Coelho Bravura Bassoon - Michel Camilo Rhapsody in Blue - Gonzalo Rubalcaba Solo - Sound rec

Jorge Federico Osorio Mexican Piano Music by Manuel M. Ponce (Cedille Records CDR 90000086)

Although his name is generally associated with the classical guitar tradition, for which he created an extensive body of work, Manuel Ponce was first and foremost a pianist. As a composer, he lavished an inordinate amount of his time and talent on creating an extensive body of solo piano repertoire. A native of the provincial city of Aguascalientes, Ponce often looked to the folk themes of the Mexican countryside for inspiration and was in the vanguard, around the beginning of the twentieth century, of creating a genuinely nationalist music tradition in Mexico. A two-year tenure in Cuba that began in 1915 inspired him to write piano music based on the courtly danzon style of that land. He also wrote music based on the Polish mazurka--a music idiom that found its way to Mexico during the brief reign of Emperor Maximilian.

Mexican pianist Osorio provides a warm and insightful reading of these delicate Ponce creations. The program includes examples of Ponce's folk-related work, his three-movement "Suite Cubana," eight studies based on the mazurka style, and two studies written in Paris and dedicated to pianist Arthur Rubenstein. In the liner notes, Ricardo Miranda, a professor of musicology at the Universidad Veracruzana, cites the composer's "lyricism and elegance," pointing out that "although Ponce's piano repertoire is little known, it remains one of the most original and expressive voices of Latin American music of the twentieth century."

Carlos Mena--Al Ayre Espanol La Cantada Espanola en America (harmonia mundi HMI 987064)

The Spanish cantada, said by some musicologists to be akin to an opera in miniature, was indeed influenced by Italian music and boasts several characteristics directly linked to the opera tradition. Written in both religious and secular versions by Spanish baroque composers, countless hundreds of cantadas were commissioned in the New World, composed in Spain, and then shipped off to the colonies, where a large percentage of them remained stored in the archives of cathedrals throughout Mexico and Central and South America.

Such is the case of the twenty-two works documented on this recording, all written in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rescued from obscurity in cathedral archives in Guatemala City, the scores were returned to Spain for this recording by contratenor Carlos Mena and Al Ayre Espanol, a small chamber...