Balada: Torquemada and Other Works

Leonardo Balada (Composer), Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Ensemble (Performer), Carnegie Mellon Concert Choir (Performer), American Brass Quintet (Performer), Anthony di Bonaventura (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Ensemble, Carnegie Mellon Concert Choir, American Brass Quintet, Anthony di Bonaventura
• Composer: Leonardo Balada
• Audio CD (April 16, 1995)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: New World Records
• ASIN: B0000030HY
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #245,334 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Nothing as striking as Balada's "Maria Sabina", but an enjoyable disc of contemporary music nonetheless, December 3, 2007

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Discophage (France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Balada: Torquemada and Other Works (Audio CD)

I had bought the present disc some years ago and remembered having found it enjoyable, but it hadn't really left a mark in my memory. But I've been so bowled over by Balada's "Maria Sabina", a Symphony with narrators and chorus (more a Cantata in actual fact) and a piece of immense dramatic impact, advanced in its musical language yet accessible (see my review of Balada: Maria Sabina), that I decided to pull this one out of my shelves again and give it another try.

The 24-minute long "Torquemada" (after the infamous General Inquisitor from 15th Century Spain) is another cantata and was premiered in 1980. As in "Maria Sabina", its musical language is in part reminiscent of Penderecki's in pieces like the St-Luke Passion, Utrenja or Devils of Loudun, but it is more eclectic and overall I find that the piece betrays a certain political naïveté. It is based on actual excerpts from Torquemada's General Instructions, expounding the various penalties inflicted on the Jews depending on the hastiness and supposed sincerity and of their conversion to Catholicism. To that Balada adds his on 20th Century condemnatory comments, attributed to the chorus. As if we knew any better... It is the Penderecki-like style - violent, turbulent, gnawed - that is used, very effectively, in these 20th-Century interventions, but, not very subtly, the Torquamada excerpts, delivered by a solo baritone, are couched in a style that elaborates upon the "God-rapt idiom of Victoria and Morales", to quote the good liner notes by Philip Guerrard. It might have seemed a good idea on paper, but I don't find the Morales-Victoria parts very interesting musically.

The Concerto for Piano, Winds and Percussion (1974) starts in a playful and jaunty mood reminiscent of Gershwin (the notes invoke "the spiky neoclassic concertos of Stravinsky and Poulenc in the 1930s", and in some passages it could be also Ravel's G-major Concerto) but soon becomes more boisterously pounding, evoking some piano works of Antheil and Cowell ("Advertisement"). I also hear whiffs of Bartok's second piano concerto. But overall Balada's language is more advanced and aggressive then what these references might imply. I think his Concerto goes through too many styles to be really considered as a masterpiece, but it is fun and enjoyable nonetheless.

The Sonata for Ten Winds (1980) is a fine etude on timbral color, and, around the 5-minute mark, I hear a fleeting reminiscence of Stravinsky - I'm not quite sure which composition, possibly his own Octet for Winds.

Some of the features of Balada's style when writing for the piano, as examplified in the Piano Concerto, are present in the "Transparencies of Chopin's First Ballade" (1977), a piece for solo piano, and again it is the most pounding music of Cowell that they bring to mind. But I've never been too crazy about the "post-modern" process which consists of quoting compositions of the past - here Chopin's First Ballade - in a contemporary piece: I usually find the result stylistically jarring. I wish Balada had written his own music throughout. As it is, I find the composition unremarkable.

Good sound (the recordings were made between 1974 (the Piano Concerto, recorded live at is Premiere at Carnegie Hall) and 1992 (Torquemada) and good notes, except that the dates of the compositions are, inexplicably, not given. But there is a good website devoted to Balada and harbored by the Carnegie Mellon University (where he was composition professor), where that information can be found. Overall there is enjoyable contemporary music contained on this disc, although none as striking as "Maria Sabina".