AGUSTÍN CHARLES (b.1960): Seven Looks, Concertino for Clarinet and Chamber Group, Concerto for Orchestra.

Description: Although apparently hailed as an important avant garde figure in Spain, there is little here that goes much beyond Messiaen in terms of avant garde theatricality, though some, by no means all, of the harmonic thinking goes further towards atonality. What there is is a wealth of musical and instrumental detail that makes these works feel compressed, almost overloaded with event for their time span. Seven Looks is based on texts of Lorca, and in passages of delicacy interspersed with others of dramatic exuberance the work explores the potent imagery and contrasts of the texts. The incorporation of a brief passage of Dufay refers the listener to the painstaking detail and formal elegance of Renaissance art. The Concertino unfolds with a dizzying profusion of ideas, especially for the clarinettist, whose technical resources are tested to the limit. The scintillating Concerto for Orchestra is a kaleidoscopic assemblage of instrumental groupings in constant flux, achieving throughout a sense of motion and perpetual, organic change. Salvador Salvador Muñoz (clarinet), Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid; José Ramón Encinar.