Pick this disc up for the singer in your life! It contains a set of twentieth century songs that aren't terribly well known and that a singer can really dig his or her vocal cords into. The Argentine-Spanish soprano Marisa Martins does a wonderful job throughout with this disc of songs by the Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, but she really excels in the Canciones negras (1945), a set of songs on Cuban themes that allow her to deploy her forceful yet lyrical voice in its full range of expression. For those interested in Montsalvatge's songs specifically, this is likewise a good pick; it is volume one of a set devoted to the composer's complete songs, but it contains the best-known sets, the Canciones negras and the Canciones para niños (Songs for Children, 1953, with texts by Federico García Lorca). There is also a 1980s set of Catalan-language songs, the Quatre rimes de Carner, and several free-standing songs from various periods of the composer's career.
For those unfamiliar with this repertory, the titles of the song sets are a little deceptive. Montsalvatge was a follower of the Bartókian, Stravinskian, and French trends in twentieth century music. His Canciones para niños are suited for children only in towns like
Garrison Keillor's, where they're all above average. They have the feel of
Bartók's settings of Eastern European folk songs about children and family life, inflected in a Spanish direction. Likewise, the Canciones negras do not sound African or African American. The reference in Montsalvatge's title is to the melodic qualities of classic Cuban popular song, and his incorporation of that musical language into his more angular European melodic style is what gives these "black songs" their verve. Even the short Canto negro, Track 13, which depicts an Afro-Cuban dance and contains snatches of an African language, shows few traces of black rhythms. But the first song in the set, Cuba dentro de un piano (Cuba in a Piano), a musical reminiscence of hearing the news of Spain's loss of Cuba in the Spanish-American War, is a singer's dream with its graceful shifts from parlando to lyricism to disgust.
The disc includes a "multimedia video file" consisting of interviews by the pianist heard on the recording, Mac McClure, with Martins and with the aged Montsalvatge (delightfully pictured in the liner notes wearing three very unusual hats, one on top of another) himself. The interviews seem to be in Spanish only, and the English song translations included are riddled with mistakes and misprints.