Various: Achucarro & Rattle - Nights in The Gardens of Spain Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.5

Various: Achucarro & Rattle - Nights in The Gardens of Spain Blu-ray Movie Review

Even if you've never been to Spain, you'll love this Blu-ray.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 7, 2011

The lure of Latin rhythms have seduced composers for generations. Though it’s arguable that for the past half century or so it’s been the haunting sounds of Brazil which have largely captured at least the popular imagination, courtesy of everything from Bossa Nova to Tropicalia to MPB, decades earlier it was the sound of Spain which captivated the public imagination as perhaps no other country’s music had. What’s fascinating about this fascination is that there has been a rather unexpected connection between the Spanish soundworld and a number of high profile French composers who sought to exploit it. One immediately thinks of Chabrier and España, which became a worldwide sensation in the late 19th century. But later French composers like Debussy and especially Ravel seemed drawn to Spanish music like glittering butterflies to an Andalusian moon. Working in more or less the same timeframe as these Frenchmen were a number of high profile Spaniards, who of course might be more expected to understand their country’s native rhythms and harmonies. These incredible composers included Manuel de Falla (1876-1946), Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909), and Enrique Granados (1867-1916). Spanish pianist Joaquin Achúcarro tackles all of these composers, as well as odd man out Alexander Scriabin, in a crazy quilt made up of a private concert of sorts with the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle and another public piano recital of many gems by Spaniards and Frenchmen with a Spanish fixation. Archúcarro’s piano is typically elegant and at times extremely rhythmically vigorous, and he offers a wide variety of composers and compositions throughout these two interesting programs which helps prove the lure of Spain and its music continues to this day.

The biggest piece on this Blu-ray, and the only one with orchestral accompaniment, is the gorgeously lush Nights in the Gardens of Spain, a quasi-Impressionistic quasi-concerto (that’s a lot of quasis) by de Falla, and a piece considered to be one of his most overwhelming masterpieces. Archúcarro contributes some interesting liner notes to this Blu-ray where he actually celebrates the fact that no one has even known quite what to make of Nights in the Gardens of Spain from a formal standpoint. Archúcarro makes the quite cogent argument that this mystery only adds to its allure. The three movements don’t follow a traditional concerto form, and despite the solo piano being set against the massed orchestra, the piece never really functions as a traditional concerto. What it does do is offer one ravishing moment after the next, with beautiful, watery cascades of arpeggios from the piano set against a shimmering orchestral backdrop that shows the clear influence of Debussy and Ravel. Rattle and Archúcarro craft a wonderfully intuitive performance here, one that highlights de Falla’s propulsive rhythms as well as his subtly shifting harmonies. Archúcarro never overplays his pianistic hand here, allowing the piano to be part of the ensemble rather than the leading player, and it makes for a very cohesive and wonderfully measured performance. Interestingly, this performance was recorded at the Berliner Philharmonie, though without an audience.

The second section of this Blu-ray is a solo piano recital from the Teatro Real in Madrid (ironically where Nights in the Gardens of Spain had its premiere nearly a hundred years ago). Archúcarro plays a wide variety of pieces in this section, including pieces by Albéniz, Debussy, Granados, Ravel and de Falla himself. All of these pieces are either resolutely Spanish in character, inspiration, or have some tangential relationship to Spain. For example, while some wouldn’t initially think of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales to be overtly Spanish at all (though a close reading of some of the rhythmic and harmonic tropes provide at least some Spanish influence), but Archúcarro in his liner notes mentions how the Madrid audience hearing its Spanish premiere, much like the French who first heard this acerbic piece, booed it, not understanding the subtlety of Ravel’s writing.

What’s so interesting throughout many of these supposed “miniatures” is how perfectly the Spanish foundations and the French sensibility are wedded. It’s interesting to hear Debussy skirting around a Bolero feel in La Puerta del Vino or hinting at Moorish harmonies in La soiree dans Grenade. It’s also fascinating and even touching to sense the cross-cultural influences in de Falla’s Hommage—Pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy which of course evokes Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin in title if not in actual content. Nights in the Gardens of Spain is often described of having a Spanish body in a French dress, but many of these pieces, even those by the Spanish composers themselves, could be described in exactly the same way.

There's one slightly odd choice in the program, and that's Archúcarro’s encore, Scriabin's Nocturne for left hand. Of course if one looks hard enough for connections, one is bound to find them, and so I instantly thought of Ravel's Concerto for Left Hand when Archúcarro announced this piece. Like Ravel's piece, this smaller outing by Scriabin would leave the listener hard-pressed to prove it's being played only by one hand, and the framing of the initial moments of the piece, taken from the body of the piano toward Archúcarro’s face, make that proclivity all the more obvious.

Archúcarro’s piano throughout all of these pieces is precise and beautifully colored. He is not an overtly showy pianist, rarely if ever declaims anything overly dramatically, and yet his phrasing is clear as a mountain brook and he handles the irrational subdivisions of some of these beats effortlessly. Best of all, Archúcarro seems to have an innate understanding of the soul of this music, and that emotional component cannot be underestimated in music like this which often speaks directly to heart. That said, this is also often incredibly intellectual music, at least with regard to its harmonies, which often shift like the sands of a Moorish desert. Archúcarro is able to traverse this sometimes treacherous territory with ease and in fact with a fair amount of grace.

Various: Achucarro & Rattle - Nights in The Gardens of Spain Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Joaquin Achúcarro Simon Rattle Nights in the Gardens of Spain is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of EuroArts with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This is one of the nicest looking concert Blu-rays in recent memory, with really brilliant clarity and sharpness. Amazing detail shines throughout this presentation, including everything from being able to see the shadows of individual harp strings on the harpist's score to (perhaps less appealingly) individual hairs on the back of Achúcarro's hands. Colors are appealing and lifelike, with good, accurate fleshtones, strong black levels and very good contrast. This is a very well directed enterprise, with lots of excellent coverage of both Achúcarro as well as the orchestra in the opening segment.

Various: Achucarro & Rattle - Nights in The Gardens of Spain Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Two very good lossless audio options are offered on Joaquin Achúcarro Simon Rattle Nights in the Gardens of Spain, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix and the usual LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track might seem like overkill for an outing that is, aside from the opening de Falla piece, nothing but solo piano, but the 5.1 track offers sterling fidelity, nicely spacious ambience with appropriate hall reverb, and a beautiful reproduction of Achúcarro's piano. The track really most fully comes alive in the opening de Falla piece, however, as might be expected, when the shimmering tremolos of the strings and beautiful arpeggios of the harps and piano are presented with real majesty. Fidelity is beautiful on this track, and dynamic range, while never bombastic, is quite impressive.

Various: Achucarro & Rattle - Nights in The Gardens of Spain Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements other than trailers (which I never count in the official score for extras) are included on this Blu-ray. The insert booklet does have a nice essay by Achúcarro.

Various: Achucarro & Rattle - Nights in The Gardens of Spain Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Joaquin Achúcarro Simon Rattle Nights in the Gardens of Spain is an incredibly evocative and endlessly enjoyable trip to Andalusia, Granada, Navarre and points in between. This is some of the most unbelievably gorgeous music of the early 20th century, and the fact that so much of it is still incredibly popular today speaks volumes about the seemingly eternal allure of this region and its native musics. Though some of these pieces adapt folktunes from the region, what's so striking is how effortlessly so many composers—including French ones—were able to cull a truly Spanish feel from their own individual vocabularies. While Nights in the Gardens of Spain is the showcase here (and what a showcase it is), the overall Blu-ray offers a wonderful assortment of pieces that have either outright or tangential Spanish connections, and that means pieces with shimmering harmonies and a lot of very propulsive, complex rhythmic elements. Achúcarro is obviously well qualified to interpret these beautiful pieces, and he brings true artistry to his playing. Highly recommended.