MARIO CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO (1895-1968): Platero y yo, Op. 190.
Catalogue Number: 08T047
Label: Emec
Reference: E-124/5
Format: CD
Price: $16.98
Description: Platero is a silver-coated donkey who appears in many of the 138 prose-poems published in 1914 by Juan Ramón Jiménez (who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1956). These celebrate life in the small Spanish mining town where the author grew up and the donkey is a symbol of tenderness and naiveté. Castelnuovo-Tedesco was charmed by these poems and, in 1960, selected 28 of them for which he composed short pieces which evoke the spirit of the texts rather than depicting them; this cycle is often recorded with a narrator reciting the texts but there is no recitation here. Excellent notes on the author’s philosophical and critical purposes behind Platero y yo help the listener’s appreciation of the music. 2 CDs for the price of 1. Catherine Liolios (guitar).