Violonchelo Español

A disc of Spanish music from Russian performers living in Montreal is really no surprise; more than any other European national school, Spain's was a collaborative effort between homegrown composers and those who envied Iberia's warm climate and diverse folk traditions from afar. Violonchelo Español, in fact, includes music by Russian composers (Glazunov, Borodin, and Shchedrin's In Imitation of Albéniz) as well as Spaniards (Albéniz's omnipresent Malaguena, various Falla favorites, and two works by the cellist Gaspar ... Read More

A disc of Spanish music from Russian performers living in Montreal is really no surprise; more than any other European national school, Spain's was a collaborative effort between homegrown composers and those who envied Iberia's warm climate and diverse folk traditions from afar. Violonchelo Español, in fact, includes music by Russian composers (Glazunov, Borodin, and Shchedrin's In Imitation of Albéniz) as well as Spaniards (Albéniz's omnipresent Malaguena, various Falla favorites, and two works by the cellist Gaspar Cassadò). Russian-Canadian cellist Yuli Turovsky is backed by the prolific chamber orchestra I Musici de Montréal in a nicely thought-out program of Spanish and Spanish-flavored standards. Very little of the music is heard in its original form, not that there's anything wrong with that; the liner notes point to the numerous instances in which arrangements have been made of most of these pieces in the past, and Turovsky generally succeeds in creating for himself an effective virtuoso... Read Less