Halffter & Falla conducted by Ataúlfo Argenta

Beautiful Music

This intriguing album opens with Halffter’s rarely recorded four movement Sinfonietta, with its delightfully alluring, svelte, neo-classical, Iberian harmonies, rhythms, colouring and melodies, which make you wonder why it isn’t played more. Then we have Falla’s similarly evocative Master Peter’s Puppet Show, which sets an episode from Cervante’s Don Quixote, where he destroys a puppet-show, thinking it is real, for baritone (Don), boy treble or high-mezzo (Boy) and tenor (Peter). The first edition of the score gives Notes on the Manner of Performance for the singers, which tells them to declaim their roles and avoid theatrical mannerisms, which the three soloists do pretty well. However it is unfortunate that the Boy is a girl (although this is better than the adult sopranos you get on most other recordings) and the original scoring, with only two violins, isn’t followed. Nevertheless Argenta’s conducting is beautifully idiomatical and while the playing falls short of international standard, the actual orchestral sound is authentic. The DSD256 remastering is in a different class to a couple of other CD quality transfers of each work I have been able to listen to, having greater space, a better dynamic range and more pungent instrumental and vocal sonorities; so well-worth acquiring. Although rather oddly the names of the soloists are missing, who are; Carlos Munguía, Julita Bermejo & Raimundo Torres.