Ernesto Lecuona - Love Songs (Carole Farley)

Information

Composer: Ernesto Lecuona

1. Siempre en mi corazón
2. Como presiento
3. Allá en la sierra (from 'Córdoba')
4. Tu no tienes corazón
5. Mi corazón se fué
6. Dame de tus rosas
7. ¡No es por ti!
8. ¡Mira! (from 'La Habanera')
9. Dame el amor
10. Que risa me da
11. La comparsa
12. Al fin
13. Se abrieron las flores
14. Conga Cuba
15. Amor tardio
16. En una noche asi (from the film 'Carnival in Costa Rica')
17. Devuélveme el corazón
18. Primavera de ilusión
19. Un amor vendrá (from the film 'Carnival in Costa Rica')
20. Me has dejado
21. No me engañarás
22. Rumba mejoral
23. No me mires ni me hables
24. Mi amor fue una flor
25. Canción del amor triste

Carole Farley, soprano
John Constable, piano

Date: 2004
Label: BIS
https://bis.se/performers/farley-carole/ernesto-lecuona-love-songs

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Review

A beautifully recorded recital of Lecuona’s delightful love songs

It is curious to think that Paul Hindemith and Ernesto Lecuona were almost exact contemporaries, born a couple of months apart in 1895 and dying within five weeks of each other at the end of 1963. Yet despite this closeness in time their music had no real common ground. Hindemith was no mean song-writer, though not especially prolific, unlike the Cuban Lecuona for whom song was a paramount form of expression: he wrote around 400 of them.

For this recording Carole Farley undertook – according to José Serebrier’s perfunctory booklet note – a protracted detective hunt through libraries, publishers, basements and packing cases to arrive at her selection of 25 love songs. Hers is a fine and varied choice, highlighting Lecuona’s undeniable gifts as a melodist and word-setter, ranging between the overtly romantic – as in the opening Siempre en mi corazón (‘Always in my heart’) and Primavera de illusion (‘Spring of Illusion’) – to fast and lively songs such as Que risa me da (‘Oh, what a laugh’) and Conga Cuba. In between these are more lilting songs such as Como presiento (‘The feeling I have’) and Amor tardio (‘Belated love’), directly Latin numbers such as Allá en la sierra (‘High in the Sierra’) and the dramatic, scena-like Canción del amor triste.

Farley sings all the songs with great finesse and warmth of feeling. Very occasionally, as in Se abrieron las flores (‘The flowers opened’), her vibrato does not suit Lecuona’s clean lines. She is accompanied with no little sympathy by the excellent John Constable whose playing is a model of precision yet catches that feeling of improvisation that is an essential part of these songs. The recording is wonderfully pure and clear.

-- Guy Rickards, Gramophone

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Ernesto Lecuona (August 6, 1895 – November 29, 1963) was a Cuban composer and pianist of worldwide fame. He first studied under his sister Ernestina, then at the Peyrellade Conservatoire under Antonio Saavedra and the famous Joaquín Nin, and graduated from the National Conservatory of Havana at sixteen. He composed over six hundred pieces, mostly in the Cuban vein, and was a pianist of exceptional skill. Lecuona was also a prolific composer of songs and music for stage and film. His works consisted of zarzuela, Afro-Cuban and Cuban rhythms, suites and many songs which are still very famous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Lecuona

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Carole Farley is an American soprano and a principal singer at the Metropolitan Opera. She was born in Le Mars (Iowa), and graduated from Indiana University. She also spent a year on a Fulbright scholarship at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich. Farley made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in 1975. In the late 1970s and 1980s she was known for singing demanding roles such as Lulu and the solo role in Poulenc's La voix humaine. Farley has been collaborating in recent years with many contemporary American classical composers. She is married to Uruguayan conductor and composer José Serebrier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_Farley

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