Composer: Federico Mompou
Performer: Herbert Henck
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: ECM
Catalogue: 4456992
Release: 1995
Size: 174 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Book I
01. Angelico
02. Lento
03. Placide
04. Afflitto e penoso
05. (crochet = 54)
06. Lento
07. Lento
08. Semplice
09. Lento
Book II
10. Lento – cantabile
11. Allegretto
12. Lento
13. Tranquilo – très calme
14. Severo – sérieux
15. Lento – plaintif
16. Calme
Book III
17. Lento
18. Luminoso
19. Tranquilo
20. Calme
21. Lento
Book IV
22. Molto lento e tranquilo
23. Calme, avec clarté
24. Moderato
25. (crochet = 100)
26. Lento
27. Lento molto
28. Lento
Listening to this disc is rather like entering a retreat. There’s a rapt, contemplative atmosphere around these 28 miniatures written between 1959 and 1967 as an attempt to express St John of the Cross’s mystic ideal of ‘the music of silence’.
Practically all slow-moving, using repetition as a structural device but avoiding keyboard virtuosity, and rarely rising even to a forte, they seem to acknowledge descent from Erik Satie via the impressionists, though harmonically much freer and sometimes harsher – even, occasionally, stepping inside the area of atonality. No 3 has a childlike innocence in its folkloric theme: Mompou’s fascination with bell-sounds finds echoes in Nos 5, 17 and 22. Overall there’s a sense of tranquil self-communion which, paradoxically, exerts a strange spell on the listener. Herbert Henck, a specialist in 20th-century music, plays this collection with tender sensitivity and an ideally suited luminosity of tone, and he’s finely recorded. An exceptional and haunting issue.