Magical Corners

“Your Franckian quintet will be published, I promise you that, but you must give me your word not to write any more music like that. You, a Sevillian, must base your work in Spanish or Andalusian folk-music”. Thus spoke Albéniz to Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) in 1907, after hearing the first performance of the latter’s opus one. Turina’s music thereafter did increasingly reflect the composer’s nationality, but the influence of France was never very far away. The first volume of Turina’s piano music in Naxos’ ‘Spanish Classics’ range, released last year, focused on dance form, with many of the pieces existing in better-known orchestral arrangements; the emphasis in this second volume is on the sonatas that Turina wrote with the piano solely in mind. As in Volume One, Jordi Masó gives fine performances of these difficult works: the playing…