Blancafort: Complete Piano Music, Volume 4

The Catalan composer Manuel Blancafort believed strongly in the importance of nationalism in music and was keen to follow in the footsteps of Albéniz, Granados and Falla, but always with a Catalan bias. Most of the works on this recording belong to a prolific period of creative activity towards the end of the 1920s. Depicting a transatlantic journey to the USA, with impressions of both the ocean and life on board ship, the American Souvenir suite also includes a vivid yet tender homage to Charlie Chaplin. Inspired by the classicism of Bach and Scarlatti, the Sonatina antiga surprises with its bold harmonic writing. The impressionistic Ermita i panorama conjures up, through the development of a folk tune, the silence of twilight within the Catalan hermitage of Puiggraciós and the view of the landscape from the summit of the hill.