Each movement has a pictorial title as well as a tempo indication. He is the soloist here along with I Solisti di Zagreb, with which he premiered the work in Croatia in 2009. Ínsula, a violin concerto inspired by aspects of Puerto Rico, was dedicated to Guillermo Figueroa, violinist and conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. Again to quote the composer, “aligned with this Afro-Antillean music we find echoes of old Spain, spattered with strums and touches of Flamenco music.” The third movement, despite being marked Energico, actually starts with slow half-notes and more string tremolos before the guitar takes off in a whirlwind moto perpetuo that is then accompanied by short, sliding glissando figures, though a slow-tempoed break comes in before the guitar again ramps up the tempo. (Romero, by the way, loves this concerto, calling it divinely inspired, “filled with a virtuosity which is always there to serve the music.” I completely agree.) The harmonic progression is almost minimal, yet fascinating in that it’s more a study in parallel harmonies than show-offish atonalisms, and when Cordero does push the envelope, as in a marvelously dramatic guitar break in the second movement, it is always (as Romero puts it) to enhance the music, to give it form and structure, not just to impress the listener that Cordero can actually do such things. It’s almost hard to believe that the composer felt from the start, in writing it, that he was “doomed to fail.” The second movement begins with dazzling string tremolos, perfectly executed by I Solisti di Zagreb, which then move into an alternation of solo guitar figures with the strings. The first movement almost sounds, like the first movement of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, as if it starts in the middle, so vibrant and febrile is its musical material, so charged and syncopated are its rhythms. The Concierto Festivo, written in 2003 and dedicated to the wonderful guitarist Pepe Romero, is here played by the dedicatee, and a spectacular piece it is. This highly impressive CD features the music of Puerto Rican composer Ernesto Cordero (b.1946), which strikes me like a ton of bricks.
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