Editorial Reviews

The La Cantada española en América title of this release doesn't mean quite the same thing as the American designation means in the various recordings of secular and semi-secular Spanish genres that have been released by Jordi Savall and other ensemble leaders. The pieces recorded here came from the archives of Guatemala City's cathedral, it's true, but they were Spanish works that were widely copied in the Old World as well as the New, and there's none of the African or Amerindian influence that began to creep into Spanish music in Central and South America. The music is no less interesting for that, however, and it even offers some of the fascinating mixture of sacred and secular elements that makes the New World repertory so unusual. Musically the pieces are hard to distinguish from Italian solo cantatas from essentially the same era -- the notes by Cristina Diego Pacheco trace how in the "international" Baroque period the Spanish were quick to copy Italian trends, and to diffuse them to their colonies in turn. The composers represented, all of them generally new to non-Spanish audiences, form a chain of teachers and students beginning with Diego Jaraba y Bruna (or Xaraba y Bruna -- the documentation is unclear on this point), born around 1650, and hypothesized by director Eduardo López Banzo as the composer of the sole keyboard work on the album. The other three works are sacred cantatas, stylistically corresponding to Italian works from about the time of Alessandro Scarlatti up to perhaps the end of Vivaldi's lifetime. The texts and the sensuous mood of the music, however, often have a distinct flavor that makes one want to hear more of the repertory. Diego Pacheco's notes have little to say about the origin of the texts, whose imagery is lovely. Consider Torres' cantata "Vuela abejuela" (Take flight, little bee), where a footnote to the translation informs the reader that the bee is often used as a symbol for the soul in material form. It spawns a perfect fusion of sacred and secular, both in the text and the music, where Italianate aria music bumps up against the characteristically Spanish seguidillas (track 10). Countertenor Carlos Mena has the perfect voice for capturing the music's occasional darker shadings and the indefinable philosophical tone that mark Spanish music; he works very sensitively with the small Al Ayre Español string group under Banzo's direction, and the group as a whole is attuned to the various stylistic threads in the music. Enjoyable for listeners even beyond the album's primary audience of those interested in Spanish music. James Manheim, All Music Guide

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