ROBERTO GERHARD (1896–1970) La noche de San Juan (Soirées de Barcelone). Cuadro primero. Los fuegos. - La multitud – Procesión – Danza de los enanos – Melé: la multitud baila con los enanos : Danza de las majorales : Los portadores de antorchas – Danza del vencedor : Galantería : Danza de los fallaires. Cuadro segundo. Eros. - Nocturno – Danza de la seducción – Aparición de Eros : Danza de los espíritus – Las ninfas – Los duendes : Los ancianos con los faroles – Las parejas y los ancianos. Cuadro tercero. La boda. - Fandanguillo de los recién casados : Sardana : Coda. Miguel Baselga, piano MarchVivo

Description: This important world premiere recording of a major work from Gerhard’s pre-exile years is an approachable and tuneful example of the folk-influenced aspect of his career. This is the full piano version of his 1938 ballet score "La noche de San Juan" (St. John’s Eve, i.e. the Summer Solstice), renamed "Soirées de Barcelone" in the hope of greater international appeal, which was commissioned by the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo directed by the colourful Colonel Wassily de Basil, about whom Doráti (the company's resident conductor) has some amusing observations in his autobiography, in association with Léonide Massine. Gerhard completed the work, but it was never staged because of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and the score languished in Cambridge, England, until quite recently. Gerhard made several attempts to produce a suite from the ballet, but the first performance of any of the work was in the 1970s, and the complete orchestral score of the Soirées de Barcelone ballet, edited by the late, much-lamented, Malcolm MacDonald from Gerhard’s 1939 manuscript, was finally published in 1995. Gerhard’s piano score, though, was intact and complete, and was used for the 2021 revival of the ballet and for this recording. The music is energetic, colourful, atmospheric, and rhythmically lively. There is little, if any, trace of Gerhard's studies with Schönberg in this work; the obvious influences are Falla, Bartók, and Stravinsky. Much of Gerhard's thematic material is derived directly from folk music, collected from various sources in Catalunya and the Pyrenean region from the oral tradition, as Cecil Sharp, Grainger, and Bartók had done elsewhere in Europe. Gerhard’s method of creating an harmonic framework for the traditional melodies resembles Bartók's more than Grainger’s or that of Vaughan Williams, and this is reflected in the rough-hewn, pungent sound of the music, and its incisive pianistic presentation. The work was inspired by traditional St John’s Eve celebrations and the fire festivals of the Catalan Pyrenees, portraying torch dances, an array of magical figures, and the midsummer fertility festivals of the region. In the first scene the young men of the village come down from the mountains bearing torches and form a procession. Greeted by the local girls as they reach the village, they walk through the streets to the sound of folk melodies. After stopping at the gate to the cemetery, and leaping over a series of bonfires, they make their way to the village square, where they dance around a large fire. In the second scene (Eros), the crowd enters a kind of trance and they leave the square in silence. Pairs of young lovers make their way into a misty wood full of fantastical beings, including Eros himself, the mischievous god of love. The goblins, nymphs and dryads who inhabit the woods now surround the sleeping lovers, creating a dreamlike confusion between reality and the magical world in the mysterious half-light of the night. The final scene (The Wedding) begins at dawn. The villagers celebrate the magical events of St John’s Eve in a series of exuberant dances, ending with a triumphant sardana.