Leonardo Balada: The Abstract & The Ethnic. Geometrias N. 1, Cuatris (Conjunto Camerístico de Barcelona, Balada), Mosaico (The American Brass Quintet), Union of the Oceans, Song And Dance (Katy Shackleton-Williams soprano, Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble, Denis Colwell), Quasi Un Pasodoble (Orquesta Sinfónica de la Radio TV Española, Enrique García Ascensio), Homage To Casals (Orquestra Simfónica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, Balada), Homage to Sarasate (The Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester). Albany TROY417 (2000) barcode 034061041726
Geometrias n. 1 (and, presumably, Cuatris) recorded 1969 in Barcelona, originally released on LP Serenus Recorded Editions SRS 12036 (link will open new tab to listing on the indispensable Discogs.com).
Mosaico recorded 1972 in New York, Serenus SRS 12041 “4 Pieces for 5 Brass Players” (with compositions of Meyer Kupferman, John Lessard and Nicolas Flagello)
Homage to Sarasate originally released on Louisville First Edition Records LS 765, recording date not provided, circa 1978-9
Quasi un Pasodoble said to have been recorded live 23.XI.90, Palau de la Musica Catalana, Barcelona, and Homage to Casals on the same date, venue not indicated. In fact, Homage to Casals probably recorded 23.XI.90, Palau de la Musica Catalana, and Quasi un Pasodoble recorded live 9 April 1999 at Teatro Monumental, Madrid (see review for details).
Union of the Oceans and Song And Dance recorded 1994 at Carnegie Free Library Musical Hall, Carnegie, Pennsylvania
A fine survey of Balada’s stylistic evolution between 1966 and 1992
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 15 January 2008
I’ve recently heard music of Leonardo Balada which led me to think that the Spanish/American composer was one of the best in his generation, and one of the best-kept secrets (at least from me, until recently) of late 20th-Century music (see my reviews of Balada’s Maria Sabina and other works on New World 80498-2 and Albany TROY474 with the Symphonies – link will open new tab to my review). In his own description, Balada’s compositional styles went through three distinct periods: from the late 1950s (when he completed his compositional studies at Juilliard) to the mid-1960s, he was still in search of his own voice, rejecting the then prevalent twelve-tone system but unsatisfied with the mildly modernist style mixed with Stravinsky-inspired neo-classicism he was using.
Geometrias I for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet and percussion heralded Balada’s turn to a more avant-garde stance, in 1966. The piece is inspired by the dots, lines and distances of abstract geometric art – the “abstract” of the disc’s title. Indeed Geometrias is aggressive (shrill brass and woodwinds, percussive percussion and bright recording) and pointillistic (lots of staccato playing), but is also sufficiently dynamic, colorful and playful no to sound as a purely cerebral, Stockhausen-like piece, and retain its appeal.
Cuatris from 1969 is written is a similar style. It is scored for four instruments left to the discretion of the performers, one being a keyboard-instrument (piano, harpsichord or prepared piano) and the others winds or strings or combination of both. On this composer-conducted recording from 1969 and originally published, with the one of Geometrias I featured here, on a Serenus LP, the instrumental ensemble is composed of prepared piano (with the upper range left normal, apparently), flute, clarinet and trombone. It consists of five short movements, each exploring a given compositional principle (opposition of keyboard and the other instruments in 1, elaboration on a single note in 2, etc). Again it is aggressive but colorful, playful and dynamic. The choice of prepared piano gives it a wild Cagean aspect.
Jump another year and you get Mosaico, written for the American Brass Quintet (who performs it here, in another Serenus recording made in 1972). It is filled with clusters, unusual and aggressive sounds and blowing techniques, ostinato effects which seem to be typical of Balada’s language. Re the liner notes, “it is a mosaic of momentary emotional points revolving around and in and out of a central immobile”. No melody here, but again color and dramatic impact.
Too bad the disc isn’t arranged in chronological order. The two next and seminal pieces for Balada are from 1975 and come on tracks 12 and 13, at the close of the disc: both Homages to Casals and Saraste. They signal a new evolution in Balada’s compositional approach, by which, while retaining the basic elements of his avant-garde style (coloristic orchestral clusters, superimposed orchestral layers, controlled aleatoric passages), he re-introduced elements of traditional melody and harmony and references to Spanish popular music (“The Ethnic”). Henceforth the pieces are more openly seductive, lush-sounding and easily graspable than the earlier ones. “Homage to Casals” is based on a Catalan folk melody which the famous cellist used to play at the end of his recitals, and “Homage to Sarasate” is an elaboration on the Zapateado, a boisterous Spanish dance, very “Cucaracha”-sounding, which Balada brings to levels of near-berserk distortion and intensity. The composition’s entertaining power derives precisely from that contemporary-music distortion of a boisterous popular dance that remains recognizable throughout – very much Dali painting moustaches (and much more) to the Mona Lisa (Balada collaborated with Dali in New York in the sixties and it left a deep imprint on him). Likewise “Quasi un Pasodoble”, written in 1981, begins with a surprisingly gentle and romantic-sounding melody, before (2:30) a more rhythmical element enters in distorted sounds (strings playing sul ponticello), and the composition goes on combining distorted reminiscences of the boisterous festive music played at bullfights and Balada’s own contemporary sound-world of clusters and aggressive multi-layered orchestral textures, as two sonic universes colliding. Yet in their blending of both worlds I don’t find these two last compositions as inventive and cogently held together as the composers 1st or 4th Symphony, in which the popular elements are so distorted as to become a truly integral part of Balada’s language. “Homage to Casals” works better in that respect.
If the production notes are to be believed, “Quasi un pasodoble” and the composer-led “Homage to Casals” were both recorded live on November 23, 1990, performed by two different orchestras and conductors, with venue of Homage to Casals not indicated – but I think it is a typo, and the solution to that riddle is given in Albany’s companion Balada CD on TROY474 (see link above): therein, one of the works was recorded on the same date and by the same performers as Homage to Casals (Orquestra Simfónica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya under the conductor) – but in the venue ascribed here to Quasi un Pasodoble, and another one was recorded by the same performers as Quasi un Pasodoble (Orquesta Sinfónica de la Radio TV Española, Enrique García Ascensio), but that recording is ascribed to “9 April 1999 at a live concert in the Teatro Monumental, Madrid”; so it’s logical to think that Quasi un Pasodoble was recorded there and then as well, and I am conjecturing that Albany really goofed it up here, ascribing to Pasodoble the date and venue that belonged to Homage to Casals, and failing to ascribe to Pasodoble its corrrect venue and dating: Madrid, 1999.
The other piece, Homage to Sarasate, is the reissue of a Louisville recording, first published on First Edition Records LS 765 in 1977 or ’78 with Henry Brant’s “On the Nature of Things” and Roque Cordero’s 2nd Symphony (a Panamanian composer, student of Krenek). For everything about the CD reissues of the famed Louisville First Edition Records catalog, see my Louisville CD-discography.
By the 1990s, at least in the two pieces from those years presented here (Union of the Oceans from 1993 for Symphonic Wind Ensemble, and Song And Dance from 1992, the latter consisting of two scenes from his then-yet-to-be-premiered opera “Death of Columbus”) and recorded in 1994, Balada had apparently left out the folk elements. What remains are the lush orchestral colors, the contemporary language but without the aggressiveness of the earlier avant-garde works. “Song” is a wordless melisma sung by coloratura soprano with evocative, sensuous tropical-sounding orchestral underpinning. The Dance is a powerful piece, with an irresistible if unsophisticated forward-drive, bringing to mind Villa Lobos’ “Amazonian” pieces like Dawn in a Tropical Forest, The Little Train of the Caipira, Uirapuru, Erosion, although the language is more modern.
The other Albany CD with the Symphonies is probably a better introduction to Balada, but this one presents a fine overview of his stylistic evolution.