In exploring some of the composer’s most famous works, Xiayin reveals a technically challenging and complex musical language, while still bringing out the color and emotional intensity underneath.
The album centers around Granados’s towering Goyescas, a set based on the paintings of Francisco Goya. Perhaps because the source of their inspiration was so close to the composer’s heart, the Goyescas piano pieces are the most liberated examples of the genius of Granados. “I have written,” he said, without exaggeration, “a collection of great sweep and difficulty,” which Xiayin Wang addresses with complete mastery.
In addition to the Goyescas, the album features his beloved Allegro de concierto, as well as the Andalusian flamenco-inspired Zapateado, and the Ochos Valses poéticos, which are unique and uncharacteristic in that they are neither virtuosic in their piano scoring nor Spanish in style.
Says Xiayin of the recording: “Though he is a prominent Spanish composer, Granados’s music is not widely played, which is one of the reasons I wanted to make this album. His writing is full of expressiveness and improvisation-like passages, and is very romantic, free, and colorful, which matches my personality as well.”
Tracklist
Goyescas (1909-12)
Los majos enamorados
(Majos in Love)
1. Book 1, Los requiebros (The Greetings). Allegretto - Poco più animato
2. Book 1, Coloquio en la reja, duo de amor (Conversation at the Grille, Love Duet). Andantino allegretto
3. Book 1, El fandango de candil. Escena cantada y bailada lentamente y con ritmo (Fandango by Candlelight. Scene sung and danced slowly and with steady rhythm)
4. Book 1, Quejas, ó La maja y el ruiseñor (Lament, or the maja and the Nightingale). Andante melancolico
5. Book 2, El amor y la muerte: Balada (Love and Death: a Ballad). Animato e dramatico
6. Book 2, Epilogo: Serenata del espectro (Epilogue: Serenade of the Ghost). Allegretto misterioso
Zapateado (1903-04)
(Stamping Dance)
7. No.6 from Seis piezas sobre cantos populares españoles (Six Pieces on Spanish Folksongs)
Ochos valses poéticos (c.1894)
(Eight Poetic Waltzes)
A mi amigo Joaquín Malats
8. [Introducción.] Vivace molto - Meno molto
9. Melodioso
10. Tempo de Valse noble
11. Tempo de Valse lente
12. Allegro umoristico
13. Allegretto
14. Quasi ad libitum
15. Vivo
16. Presto - Vivace - A tempo - Vivace - A tempo - Andante
17. Tempo de Valse
Allegro de concierto, Op.46 (1903-04)
in C sharp major
19. Molto allegro - Poco andantino rubato - Andante - Andante - Vivo - Allegro spiritoso - Meno
