Grade: A
It’s a cliché that the best Spanish music was written by Frenchmen but it’s mostly true nonetheless, and here to prove the point is Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Debussy’s Iberia and Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole form the balmy, orange-scented heart of this Franco-Spanish album, featuring not a single note by an actual Spaniard. It’s a beaker full of the warm south; summer holiday music for these bleak, damp days.
Four Spanish-themed French miniatures fill out the programme, including Ravel’s spicy orchestration of Alborada del gracioso. I’ll be honest, though, they had me at Chabrier’s Espana, that shameless little burst of sunshine from a composer who spent two decades as a pen-pusher in the Ministère de l’Intérieur. Domingo and his players find Chabrier’s inner dandy: a dapper performance that you could imagine cutting a dash, post-pintxos, on the promenade at San Sebastian.
In fact, the most seductive quality of this collection is its restraint. Hindoyan is a thinking conductor, not a showman, and in any case Debussy and Ravel have sensuality to spare. The tension between Hindoyan’s elegant firmness and the physicality of the music is what gives these interpretations such allure. The RLPO responds with bouncing rhythmic precision, and acres of silk: a little like the classic postwar recordings by Ansermet, but played with immeasurably more finesse. They finish with Bolero, of course; pure musical Marmite. ‘I have composed only one masterpiece,’ said Ravel, ‘Unfortunately, it contains no music.’ When Hindoyan twists the kaleidoscope, you’ll realise that he was pulling our legs.
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