Remerciez-le!

Remerciez @Admin pour avoir partagé cet document gratuitement, de la manière la plus simple, en partageant sur les réseaux sociaux.

ATMA Classique PLATERO I COLIN FOX NARRATOR SIMON WYNBERG GUITAR AND MARIO CAST

ATMA Classique PLATERO I COLIN FOX NARRATOR SIMON WYNBERG GUITAR AND MARIO CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO PLATERO I COLIN FOX NARRATOR | NARRATEUR SIMON WYNBERG GUITAR | GUITARE AND MARIO CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO 1895-1968 1 Platero ( I ) 2:55 2 Friendship ( VIII ) 1:58 3 April Idyll ( XVI ) 3:39 4 Return ( III ) 4:03 5 The Consumptive Girl ( XIII ) 3:04 6 Carnival ( XXVII ) 4:30 7 Lullaby Singer ( XVIII ) 5:25 8 The Moon ( IX ) 1:55 9 Sunday ( XXV ) 3:17 10 Wayside Flower ( XXIV ) 3:04 11 November Idyll ( XX ) 3:53 12 Convalescence ( XXII ) 4:07 13 Swallows ( XXIII ) 4:45 14 Spring ( IV ) 2:20 15 Death ( XXI ) 4:08 16 Melancholy ( VII ) 3:10 17 Nostalgia ( XIV ) 3:59 18 Platero in Heaven ( XXVIII ) 3:24 TEXT BY | TEXTE DE JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ 1881-1956 J uan Ramón Jiménez’ meditative reflections on the peregrinations of an Andalusian countryman and his loyal little donkey, Platero, have long captured the Spanish imagination. The 138 prose poems that make up Platero Y Yo (Platero and I) were published in 1914, a homage to the region and people of Moguer, Jimenez’ birthplace. While the collection is precise in its location and sensibility, its honesty, simplicity, and its universal human themes cross every boundary of age, culture and geography. Born into a wealthy family in 1881, Jiménez displayed a precocious poetic ability. He initially contemplated a legal career and ostensibly studied law at the University of Seville, but his dedication to literature was cemented when the eminent Nicaraguan poet and founder of the modernismo movement, Rubén Darío, read Jiménez’s work, encouraged him to visit Madrid, and assisted in the publication of his youthful Almas de violeta (“Souls of Violet.”) The death of his father in 1900 plunged Juan Ramón into a depression that took him to a sanatorium in Bordeaux (where his recuperation included an affair with his doctor’s wife.) On returning to Madrid, Jiménez met the writer and poet Zenobia Camprubi Aymar and they married in New York in 1916, the year of Jiménez’s masterpiece Diario de un Poeta Reciencasado (Diary of a Newlywed Poet). Zenobia was an indispensable part of Jiménez’s creative life thereafter. 4 PLATEROY YO With the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Jiménez and Zenobia emigrated to Puerto Rico, where Jiménez later became a professor of Spanish language. They also spent time in Cuba, Florida, and Washington D.C. Zenobia died in December, 1956, a few days after Jiménez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was a shattering loss and he died two years later. Both Jiménez and Zenobia are buried in Moguer. Jiménez’s exile to Puerto Rico in 1936 is mirrored in Mario Castelnuovo- Tedesco’s exile to America three years later. Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born in 1895 into a Jewish Florentine family whose Tuscan history reaches back to the sixteenth century. His reputation was established with the opera La Mandragola (The Mandrake) which won the prestigious Concorso Lirico Nazionale and received its premiere at Venice’s hallowed Teatro La Fenice. The 1930s also saw performances of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s works in America, notably his concertos for violin, I Profeti (The Prophets) and cello. Both were premiered by Arturo Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic with Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky as the respective soloists. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s European career came to a precipitous halt in 1938 with the introduction of Il Manifesto della razza, Mussolini’s version of Germany’s race laws, and the banning of his works. With the influence of Heifetz and Toscanini, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and his family emigrated to the United States, leaving from Trieste on July 13, 1939, six weeks before Germany’s invasion of Poland and the start of World War II. They settled in Beverly Hills, where Castelnuovo-Tedesco lived until his death in 1968. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was hugely proliﬁc and his uncanny and uncommon ability to create music that perfectly reflects and reinforces narrative and atmosphere, greatly endeared him to Hollywood’s music departments. During the course of just 15 years he supplied scores for over 130 movies, although many of them draw on library (or “stock”) music 5 which studios failed to credit. His legacy as a teacher at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music is incalculable and his students represent a who’s who of post-war American music. They include André Previn, Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, John Williams and Nelson Riddle, all, like Castelnuovo- Tedesco himself, terrifically adept and creative orchestrators. Although Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote a vast amount of chamber, vocal and orchestral music, he is perhaps most closely associated with his works for guitar, many of which were composed for, and dedicated to, Andrés Segovia. In June 1960 he began work on guitar accompaniments to 28 of the poems from Jiménez’s Platero Y Yo. They are best described as musical commentaries, reinforcing and complementing Jiménez’s prose, matching the changing moods, and providing a sometimes ono- matopoeic soundscape as effective as his scores for the cinema, although solely dependent on language rather than visual prompts. Castelnuovo-Tedesco had always composed at a precipitous speed— Hollywood certainly demanded this ability—and each of the 28 settings (divided into four groups of seven) occupied him for no longer than a day or two. This, and the fact that the piano was his primary instrument, accounts for his occasional mis-steps, where utterly idiomatic guitar writing is suddenly interrupted by bars that are unplayable. These instances are usually easily remedied by the appropriate re-spacing of chords, but occa- sionally more elaborate solutions are needed. While the standard version of the complete Platero settings follows the composer’s manuscript (now part of the composer’s archive in the Library of Congress), there is nothing to suggest that this rather haphazard order was anything other than a convenient way of collecting the pieces in the sequence of their composition. The order certainly makes no narrative sense. For example Platero’s death three-quarters of the way through the 6 set is followed by his lively re-appearance at a village carnival. Likewise there is no evidence to suppose that the 28 pieces constitute a finished cycle, each poem part of an elaborately evolved plan and structure. Only the first and last poems appear to be in an obviously appropriate place. It is more likely that having completed a substantial set of pieces, the com- poser simply decided to move on to another project. In assembling our Platero cycle we have chosen 18 of the most compelling settings and organized them in a way that follows a seasonal narrative while (we hope) also providing effective musical and emotional contrasts. Castelnuovo-Tedesco must have hoped that Segovia would one day per- form Platero Y Yo in its original form, as a partnership with a narrator, rather than as an assortment of solo guitar pieces (the texts to which were to be included in concert programs.) However there is no record of such a performance; unsurprising given that Segovia typically performed as a soloist, alone or with orchestra, rather than as a collaborator. In fact performers have only recently begun to program the Platero pieces with narrator; a very welcome change. The English version that Castelnuovo-Tedesco used for his settings of Platero Y Yo was drawn from the complete translation by the American academic Eloïse Roach which was first published in 1957. Her rendering is somewhat Victorian in character: earnest, prim, often awkward and ungrateful if read aloud. For the present translation, we have tried to capture the lyricism, passion and directness of the Jiménez original, while being mindful of the sound and colour of the text (as well as its meaning!) and its alignment with the guitar accompaniment. SIMON WYNBERG AND COLIN FOX, 2014 7 COLIN FOX NARRATOR A side from a busy acting career spanning 50 years, on and off Broadway, the Stratford and Shaw Festi- vals, feature films, radio and television, Colin Fox made his concert debut in 1974 in the title role of Berlioz’ Lelio with the Toronto and Boston Symphonies under Seiji Ozawa. He has since appeared in Enoch Arden with pianist Anton Kuerti; as all the voices in L ’Histoire du Soldat; Carnival of the Animals with duo pianists Anagnoson & Kinton; as the tortured husband in Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata which he edited to perform with the Penderecki Quartet; editing and reading the letters of Brahms and Dvorak in Giants in Music, Friends in Letters with the Gryphon Trio. He performed again with the Toronto Symphony under Sir Andrew Davis in Ray Luedeke’s Tales of the Netsilik. Mr. Fox wrote and narrated The Schumann Letters, which has been seen in 50 venues across Canada, prompting the violinist James Ehnes to comment: “The concept was fresh and the delivery impeccable.” He is the recipient of the Genie Award (1971) for Best Actor; the Anik award for Best Narration (Emily Carr, 1975); ACTRA and Andrew Allen awards for Best Performance in a radio drama (1980); a Juno Award (1994) for Best Children’s Recording uploads/Litterature/ castelnuovo-tedesco-m-platero-and-i-c-fox-wynberg-pdf.pdf