Manuel María Ponce
Manuel Ponce’s music draws Mexican popular song and folklore into the concert hall. His guitar works sit at the centre of the instrument’s repertory, while piano pieces and songs reshape European forms with a distinctly Latin American voice.
On guitar he left core repertory for the instrument: the Variations and Fugue on ‘La Folia’, Sonatina meridional, Concierto del sur written for Andrés Segovia, and sonatas such as Sonata III. His piano writing often starts from European character forms yet bends them toward Mexican rhythm and colour, a quality that stands out among Latin American salon pieces of the period. Melodies including Estrellita became widely known far beyond Mexico. Whether for solo instrument, chamber group or orchestra, folk harmony and song form stay close to the surface.
Compositions by Manuel María Ponce appear on
Images
Prudence Davis, Jeffrey Crellin and Peter Lynch in French salon and Impressionist chamber music for flute, oboe and guitar: Fauré and Ravel pavanes, Giuliani’s Serenade, Coste miniatures, Ponce’s Sonata III, Debussy’s Syrinx and Rêverie, and Duarte folk settings.
Latin American Piano Music
Alejandro Téllez performs both well-known and overlooked Latin American piano music from Mexican and Cuban composers.
In Flight
Classical guitarist Harold Gretton offers a varied programme spanning some three centuries of solo guitar music, from Sylvius Leopold Weiß in the eighteenth century to his own Australian bird-inspired pieces of the twenty-first.