Mirian Conti delivers evocative performance of Halffter's piano music

Mirian Conti delivers evocative performance of Halffter's piano music

12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, September 6, 2008

Lawson Taitte

Halffter

B+Piano Music. Mirian Conti (Koch International Classics)

This CD makes a fine introduction to classical music from 20th-century Spain. Specifically to one of its master composers, Ernesto Halffter, and intermediately to a number of others as well.

Mr. Halffter transcribed 40-minute ballet Sonatina for piano because he wanted it known more widely. It's a charmer, with its reminders of predecessors from Scarlatti to Stravinsky. Espagnolade was written as a parody of Spanish clichés, but even if you take it straight it is intoxicatingly amusing.

The composer's final piano work was Hommages to three distinguished colleagues: his brother Rodolfo, Joaquin Turina and Federico Mompou. Finally, the disc closes with Mr. Halffter's transcription of one of Manuel de Falla's most popular sequences, the Seven Popular Spanish Songs.

Mirian Conti, born in Argentina but a New Yorker by adoption, plays all this with scintillating evocativeness.

Lawson Taitte

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12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, September 6, 2008