Elsa Grether & pianist Ferenc Vizi : Granada: Spanish Music for Violin and Piano Review

by Steven Miller

In Granada: Spanish Music for Violin and Piano, violinist Elsa Grether and pianist Ferenc Vizi offer a program of Spanish classical music. The compositions flow from folk roots to modernist aspirations with expressive convergence of heart and mind. What emerges is a curated conversation between eras, styles, and musical worlds. Grether and Vizi understand that this music sings from the soil, dances in salons, and meditates in moonlight.

Andaluza (Seguidida Española) by Joaquín Nin, Grether and Vizi establish their rhythmic sensitivity to the music’s folkloric flamenco lineage. Grether’s legato lines, marked by subtle ghost notes and breath-like phrasing, recall the vocal inflections of Andalusian cante jondo. Her violin is expressive and elegant. Vizi’s piano provides the rhythmic engine, his varied articulations alternating between staccato sparks and flowing legato to create a propulsive undercurrent. Together, they capture the spirit of the seguidilla as a living form, pulsing with kinetic grace.

Joaquín Turina’s El poema de una sanluqueña, particularly in the movement I. Ante el espejo, offers a more introspective turn. Here, the duo navigates the interstices of romantic lyricism and early modern harmonic structures. Grether plays with warmth and control, letting Turina’s chromatic lines breathe without becoming maudlin. Vizi echoes this restraint, his Debussy-tinged voicings revealing the work’s Impressionist shadows while preserving its distinctly Spanish idiom. The result is a sonic watercolor, fluid and architecturally precise.

Rodrigo’s rarely recorded Sonata pimpante is treated with spirit and an expressive rhythmic structure. In the final movement, Allegro molto, Grether and Vizi demonstrate superb rhythmic interaction. Vizi’s piano textures dance with percussive flair, while Grether’s violin volleys back with crisp articulations and shimmering glissandi. A central lyrical episode unfolds with rhapsodic grace, Grether’s lyrical lines swelling with romantic intensity, Vizi answering with anticipatory voicings that tilt toward climax. This movement, like the sonata as a whole, exemplifies Rodrigo’s genius for layering folk vitality over a classically balanced form as this duo brings that duality vividly to life.

The selections from Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas, especially Asturiana, are interpreted with reverence for their lyrical qualities and gestures of emotion. Grether’s tone becomes translucent, her phrasing tenderly behind the beat, drawing out the melancholic simplicity of the folk melody. Vizi’s accompaniment is equally restrained, his left-hand murmurs and blurred pedal articulations suggesting the misty melancholy of Asturias itself. Their approach preserves the folk spirit without diluting its emotional power, creating a kind of sacred space in which time seems to still.

In Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy, the mood shifts to dazzling display, but Grether and Vizi ensure that the spectacle serves substance. Grether negotiates the fiendish passages with luminous precision, her harmonics ring, her pizzicati crackle, and her phrasing remains character-driven throughout. Vizi’s accompaniment is far from perfunctory; he shapes dynamics and tempo with a keen dramatic instinct, playing not merely behind, but with Grether in true operatic dialogue. This reading honors Sarasate’s salon sophistication and the enduring theatricality of Bizet’s themes.

The album closes with Xavier Montsalvatge’s Canción de cuna para dormir un negrito, a lullaby whose cultural hybridity encapsulates the album’s core theme. Grether’s gentle, behind-the-beat phrasing lends the piece a suspended grace, while Vizi envelops her in soft harmonic clouds, each chord shaped with pastel sensitivity. The duet leans into the lullaby’s colorful harmonic palette, engaging in a quiet dance of tension and release. Each suspension breathes like a rocking cradle, each resolution like a whispered assurance. Here, tradition and modernity inhale and exhale as one.

Granada: Spanish Music for Violin and Piano is a performance of repertoire with depth and expressiveness. Elsa Grether and Ferenc Vizi offer perspectives on history, style, and the evolving dialogue between folk inheritance and classical innovation. Granada: Spanish Music for Violin and Piano is for those seeking idiomatic insight into Spanish repertoire with recital material rich in historical context and the cultural dialogues embedded in 20th-century classical music.