FLORENCIO ASENJO (b.1926): A Diptych of Lord Dunsany's Tales, Concerto for Orchestra, Glimpses at Borges Universe - Three Impressions for Violin and Orchestra.

Description: Borges and Asenjo form an absolutely natural combination; the infinite libraries, containing every conceivable permutation of language, or the books in which the same page can never be opened twice of the one could serve as a metaphor for the endless, non-repetitive inventive 'maximalism' of the other. Dunsany's sprawling fantasies, with their endless diversions, also provide appropriately diverse inspiration for Asenjo's evolving development of musical ideas and moods, rather than thematic metamorphosis per se. The Dunsany work consists of eight short movements in vividly atmospheric story-telling style, as superbly illustrative of their subject-matter as the Quixote and Arabian Nights suites offered in August 2009. The Concerto takes an unusually literal slant on the now-familiar 20th-century form; each type of instrument is given an actual solo, so that the piece proceeds as a series of linked cadenzas or dialogues with ensemble commentary, each with a distinct character suggested by a particular instrument, in an intimate, gentle mood, free of tutti bombast. The Borges pieces illustrate three of his tales, treating his unsettling recurring themes of infinite elaboration and the fractal multiplication of possible events, in dark-toned, richly textured music with its restrained but uneasy violin solo, broadly and inventively tonal, like the other works here. Mario Filipov (violin), Bulgarian Philharmonic;  Kirk Trevor.