Ferrero: La nueva Espana

"Lorenzo Ferrero's La Nueva España ('The New Spain'), a cycle of six symphonic poems depicting Spain's conquest of Mexico in 1521 and the subsequent destruction of the Aztec civilization (including the slaughter of 20,000 people), was composed between 1991 and 1999. Not really a '21st Century Classic', it's still a decidedly 20th century work--an 'anti-Ma Vlast' that turns Smetana's heroic concept on its head. Musically, the work owes much to the cinematic style that informs a good bit of today's concert music: it tells its tragic tale in the suggestively visual and dramatic manner of film scores.

Ferrero makes less use of ethnic sounds than you might expect; although the first poem, Presagios, opens with some Latin percussion, for the most part the musical language could be best characterized as 'neo-romantic'. The composer occasionally employs minimalist techniques, as in the third poem, La Ruta de Cortes, which is a sort of passacaglia that starts out sounding like Phillip Glass but ends up more like Mussorgsky. Ferrero's music is at times serene, at others fierce, but it always manages to captivate by its clean-lined beauty. Thus, La Nueva Espana won't impress the Sessions/Babbit/Carter crowd, but most everyone else will find himself intrigued, stimulated, and satisfied. Takuo Yuasa has his finger right on the pulse of this music, and he leads the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in a powerful performance, well captured by the Naxos engineers. At this price (and for more than 71 minutes of music), what better way to try something new?"

- ClassicsToday.com (Victor Carr, Jr.) January 22, 2001
10/10 Performance / Sound Quality

Lorenzo Ferrerro (b.1951) is one of Italy's leading contemporary composers. He has written many instrumental and orchestral works in the neo-Romantic style, practiced earlier in America by Copland and Barber and in his native Italy by Respighi. In this suite of six symphonic poems, Ferrero paints dramatic imagery using great washes of orchestral colour with almost cinematic effect. In Ferrero's involving symphonic style, La Nueva Espana depicts the struggle of the Aztec people led by Montezuma against the Spanish invaders led by Cortes in the conquest of Mexico in 1521. Beginning with the Aztec prophecies of floods, earthquakes, fires and the disastrous arrival of the Spanish, the six tone poems chronicle the landing of Cortes at Veracruz and the burning of his ships, his army's march across the mountains to the Valley of Mexico where Cortes and Montezuma meet at the gates of the capital. Then in graphic aural detail the Spanish massacre more than twenty thousand Aztecs. In the final, "La Noche Triste," the Aztecs revolt and drive out the Spanish, but the rebellion is short-lived and the Aztec people are completely defeated. Full of soaring melodies and a full battery of percussion, in the battles one is reminded of the Fourth Symphony of Carl Nielsen. A major new work (1991-99) for the new century.