Herbania / Various - Herbania [CD]

Yes, there is 20th-Century Spanish music written for such an old instrument as the harpsichord! Composers do not impose limits: they love it's rhythm, it's timbre, and they love dreaming of the past. Following the traces of her exciting last album Chaconnerie, harpsichordist Silvia Márquez Chulilla presents here a stunning bouquet of pieces composed between 1952 and 1996. Apparently a feminine world, it was the charismatic Wanda Landowska who inspired Manuel de Falla, the first leading composer of the 20th century to turn his gaze to the harpsichord. Then many composers from the 20th century enthusiastically wrote for Antoinette Vischer, Annelie de Man, Elisabeth Chojnacka, and Goska Isphording. And in Spain, in the sixties, it was to be Genoveva Gálvez -the first professor of harpsichord in her country- who would manage to make that initially solitary voyage attractive to contemporary composers with it's surprising sonorities -it is for good reason that three of the pieces amassed here are dedicated to her.