COMPOSERS: Aguirre,de Murcia and Sanz,Holborne,Mart’n Y Coll
LABELS: Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
ALBUM TITLE: Los Otros
WORKS: Works by Aguirre, Martín Y Coll, Holborne, de Murcia and Sanz
PERFORMER: Los Otros/Lee Santana
CATALOGUE NO: 82876 60489 2
Read the vague, jokey booklet notes and you would think this CD an elaborate hoax. Yet despite its claims of ‘previously unknown cittern music’, there was a known 18th-century Mexican composer of that name, and the source manuscript has attracted scholarly mention. The four players of Los Outros have worked its contents up with plenty of licence, inspired by a folk group they once performed with, into a kind of fusion between Baroque and popular Latin-American styles. Results are mixed. The assorted plucked strings are attractive and ringingly recorded, the tunes on a viol catchy, and the rhythms lively. Yet there is a tameness, embodied in tentative percussion which reaches a low point in some limp handclaps and a tacky triangle. The player redeems himself with two deft extended solos, but the best items are generally drum-free and at the Baroque end of the stylistic spectrum. Hacha manages to sound like one of Philip Glass’s symphonic takes on the chaconne. Other people’s pieces include an Anthony Holborne pavan, and a Gaspar Sanz dance familiar from Rodrigo’s Fantasía para un gentilhombre. Robert Maycock
Aguirre, Mart’n Y Coll, Holborne, de Murcia and Sanz
Read the vague, jokey booklet notes and you would think this CD an elaborate hoax. Yet despite its claims of ‘previously unknown cittern music’, there was a known 18th-century Mexican composer of that name, and the source manuscript has attracted scholarly mention. The four players of Los Outros have worked its contents up with plenty of licence, inspired by a folk group they once performed with, into a kind of fusion between Baroque and popular Latin-American styles. Results are mixed.
Our rating
3
Published: January 20, 2012 at 3:50 pm