Falla

Falla

Manuel de Falla y Matheu (23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946) was a Spanish composer. Along with Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. His image was on Spain's 1970 100-pesetas banknote.

Falla took piano lessons from his mother and later went to Madrid to continue the piano and to study composition with Felipe Pedrell, who inspired him with his own enthusiasm for 16th-century Spanish church music, folk music, and native opera, or zarzuela. In 1905 Falla won two prizes, one for piano playing and the other for a national opera, La vida breve (first performed in Nice, France, 1913).

In 1907 he moved to Paris, where he met Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, and Maurice Ravel (whose orchestration influenced his own) and published his first piano pieces and songs. In 1914 he returned to Madrid, where he wrote the music for a ballet, El amor brujo (Love, the Magician; Madrid, 1915), remarkable for its distillation of Andalusian folk music. Falla followed this with El corregidor y la molinera (Madrid, 1917), which Diaghilev persuaded him to rescore for a ballet by Léonide Massine called El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat; London, 1919). Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain; Madrid, 1916), a suite of three impressions for piano and orchestra, evoked the Andalusian atmosphere through erotic and suggestive orchestration. All these works established Falla internationally as the leading Spanish composer.

Falla then retired to Granada, where in 1922 he organized a cante hondo festival and composed a puppet opera, El retablo de Maese Pedro. Like the subsequent Harpsichord Concerto (1926), containing echoes of Domenico Scarlatti, the Retablo shows Falla much influenced by Igor Stravinsky. Falla’s style was then Neoclassical instead of Romantic, still essentially Spanish, but Castilian rather than Andalusian. After 1926 he wrote little, living first in Mallorca and, from 1939, in Argentina, following Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. He premiered his Suite Homenajes in Buenos Aires in November 1939. In 1940, he was named a Knight of the Order of King Alfonso X of Castile. Franco's government offered him a large pension if he would return to Spain, but he refused.

Falla did spend some time teaching in exile. Among his notable pupils was composer Rosa García Ascot. His health began to decline and he moved to a house in the mountains where he was tended by his sister María del Carmen de Falla (1882-1971). He died of cardiac arrest on 14 November 1946 in Alta Gracia, in the Argentine province of Córdoba. In 1947 his remains were brought back to Spain and entombed in the cathedral at Cádiz.

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Falla

Falla

Manuel de Falla y Matheu (23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946) was a Spanish composer. Along with Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. His image was on Spain's 1970 100-pesetas banknote.

Falla took piano lessons from his mother and later went to Madrid to continue the piano and to study composition with Felipe Pedrell, who inspired him with his own ...

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10 albums
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LISZT Piano Concerto No. 1
Solo works and transcriptions of music by Debussy, Falla, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Scarlatti, Schubert, Schumann, Scriabin, Wagner, Weber

Studio recordings, 1928-1936
Total duration: 1hr 58:16

Alexander Brailowsky, piano
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Julius Prüwer

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HAYDN  Symphony No. 93
MOZART  Piano Concerto No. 21
RAVEL Pavane pour une infante défunte
FALLA  El Sombrero des Tres Picos, Suite No. 2
VIVALDI  L'Estro Armonico: Concerto Grosso No. 11
BEETHOVEN  Piano Concerto No. 3
PISTON Toccata
COPLAND El Salón México

Recorded in 1955
Total duration:  2hr 26:56 

Walter Gieseking, piano
Rudolf Firkušný,
piano
New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Guido Cantelli

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BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15

FALLA Nights in the Gardens of Spain (Noches en los Jardines de España)
Studio recordings · 1946/51
Total duration: 74:03

Clifford Curzon, piano
National Symphony Orchestra

New Symphony Orchestra

Erique Jordá,
conductor

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TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5
ALBENIZ Iberia
DE FALLA La Vida Breve - Interlude and Dance
Recorded in 1952 and 1957

Total duration: 74:40

Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra
conductor Antal Doráti

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DE FALLA Nights in the Gardens of Spain
DE FALLA Three Dances from 'The Three Cornered Hat'
DE FALLA 'La Vida Breve' - Interlude and Dance

Recorded 1956 & 1957
Total duration: 42:23

Robert Casadesus, piano
Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York

conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos

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DEBUSSY Violin Sonata
R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata
SUK Four Pieces
RAVEL Vocalise-étude en forme de Habanera
RAVEL Tzigane
FALLA Danse Espagnole
SCĂRLĂTESCU Bagatelle

Studio recordings, 1939-1948
Total duration: 78:54

Ginette Neveu, violin
Jean Neveu, piano
Gustaf Beck, piano