Sadly, this disc apparently contains just about all of the orchestral music that Antonio José wrote. His full name was Antonio José Martínez Palacios, and he was executed in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War, just 34 years old. He clearly was a talent to be reckoned with. Sinfonia castellana is gorgeous: a rich amalgam of folk music, impressionistic harmony, and Falla’s soulfulness in four ingratiating movements. Its style is similar in character to Debussy’s Nocturnes or Images for Orchestra, or perhaps Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, and if you love that music (and what sane person doesn’t?), you’ll have to own this disc as well.
The other works all share this same basic vocabulary and so don’t need to be described in detail. Evocaciones, whose subtitle “Sketches of country dancing” certainly speaks for itself, is especially lovely. At the time of his death José was working on an opera, El mozo de mulas, which he completed in piano score, orchestrating the two numbers included here. The March of the lead soldiers is a piano piece scored in 1988 by Alegjandro Yagüe, while the Suite ingenua, for piano and strings, is a charming miniature in three movements. The performances are all excellent. Alberto Rosado’s piano sounds a touch tinny in the Suite ingenua, but conductor Alejandro Posada makes a very persuasive case for the composer’s creative talent and is clearly inside the idiom. Vivid sonics illuminate José’s real gift for evocative scoring. An unusually beautiful disc.
