Posted 6:00 AM by laura r.

Almajano complete

The young Spanish soprano Marta Almajano has been known to the readers of Fanfare and the cognoscenti (aren’t they one and the same?) for some years now, but she will certainly gain new prominence on the strength of her new solo disc for Harmonia Mundi Ibèrica exploring the tonos humanos (or solo songs) of the later seventeenth century. We spoke recently by telephone about her recent activities and future plans.

TM. I was very happy to be able to hear you in concert in Washington DC with Al Ayre Espanol a few years back at the Library of Congress. Where have you been singing recently?

MA. At the Utrecht Festival, with two concerts featuring Acis y Galatea by Literes, and a Miserere by Nebra, which are on the most recent CD from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. We also had concerts recently in Valladolid and Germany. There will also be performances (not Al Ayre Espanol) with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Francisco, with Luz Martin, and Lola Casariego, and Eduardo López Banzo [the director of AAE] will conduct.

TM When will those be?

MA. In February in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Palo Alto. It will be Jupiter y Semele by Literes, a new piece in the repertoire. This is a zarzuela, with a very important spoken part.

TM Who is that for?

MA. Semele.

TM And what part will you be singing?

MA Jupiter.

TM Tell us a little about your new disc.

MA Most of the music is not published. It is taken from the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, from Valladolid, and from the Guerra manuscript in Santiago de Compostela.

TM Do you have future projects with Harmonia Mundi Ibèrica?

MA Harmonia Mundi and I are both happy with the disc, and we are discussing a CD with Spanish Romantic music for voice and fortepiano.

TM What would that include?

MA Manuel Rodriguez de Ledesma [1779-1847] ,
Marcial del Adalid [1825-1881, a student of Moscheles] Manuel Garcia [1775-1832].

TM Who is playing fortepiano?

MA Michel Kiner, who teaches at the Conservatory in Geneva. We have done recitals together.

TM This is not very well-known repertoire. Are they available in modern editions?

MA The Ledesma songs are about to published. Ledesma has a lot of songs in Italian which he wrote while he was working in Vienna. We have also performed some Rossini songs which were published in Madrid.

TM It is often the case that singers who do early music also have a specialization in contemporary music.
Do you sing modern music?

MA No, I don’t perform contemporary music, just music from the Renaissance to the beginning of the twentieth century.

TM Why is that?

MA I think that modern music is not very interesting for my voice.

TM You sing with vibrato, which is carefully matched to the shape of the phrase. What do you think about the use of vibrato in early music?

MA This debate is out of date, isn’t it? If the vibrato is natural in the voice, it would be unnatural to sing without it.

TM Who are your favorite singers?

MA. Edita Gruberova (laughs). And Fritz Wunderlich singing Schubert and the Dichterliebe.

TM In an earlier interview I read that your favorite poet is Petrarch.

MA I like Renaissance poetry. The vihuelistas use nice texts from Petrarch, Garcilaso. It’s not so usual to be able to sing good music with good texts.

TM Early music performance in Spain is still relatively new. Can you tell us a little about how it has developed over the last fifteen years.

MA In Spain there is still a lot of work to do – a lot of music in the archives, a lot needs to be published.
Spain is still fifteen years behind Italy in terms of early music. There are some very good singers in Spain, but there is much work still to be done.

TM What are the important centers for early music in Spain?

MA Spain is not so centralized. There is more activity in Madrid and Barcelona, but there are very good musicians from Andalucia, the Basque country. There are festivals in Sevilla, San Sebastian, Barcelona, Madrid. Juan Carlos Rivera and Ventura Rico live in Sevilla and teach there at the conservatory. Sevilla is pioneering in early music, they have had lute, vihuela, baroque guitar at the conservatory for twelve years, viola da gamba for eight years, they also have flute, harpsichord, organ. In Barcelona you can sutdy lute, viola da gamba.

TM You are living in Zaragoza….

MA I live there because I was born there, but I don’t work a lot there. It’s between Madrid and Barcelona.

TM Are you active doing opera?

MA I would like to sing more Mozart opera, oratorio, concert arias. I like to do recitals – the contact with the other musicians is more special – you really make music. With Juan Carlos Rivera I have a program with vihuela – Mudarra, Pisador.

TM Any plans for recitals in the U.S?

MA. No, there is more activity in Europe.

TM Tell us about how you got started in early music.

MA I liked to sing since I was very young. I started to sing as a soloist in the summer courses in early music in Daroca [near Zaragoza].

TM How old were you at the time?

MA Sixteen, seventeen. There was a little ensemble in Zaragoza with some friends – Luis Antonio Gonzalez, who is also now a professional musician, though we don’t work together. My mother was very important for my training. I went to Barcelona to study.

TM At the conservatory?

MA No, I went from Zaragoza every two weeks to my lesson. And then I started with Al Ayre Espanol.

TM You were still quite young at the time.

MA Twenty-one.


Those performances were recorded for the small Spanish label Almaviva, and are still available in this country, as are the more recent disc by AAE for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.

AY, DULCE PENA! TONOS HUMANOS DEL BARROCO ESPAÑOL. Marta Almajano, s; Juan Carlos Rivera, lt, gt; Mike Fentross, gt; Ventura Rico, vdg; Pedro Estevan, perc. HARMONIA MUNDI IBÉRICA HME 987028 (63:05)

TONOS by JUAN DEL VADO, JUAN HIDALGO, JOSÉ MARTÍNEZ DE ARCE, AND ANON.

Marta Almajano has received fulsome praise in these pages from myself and from colleague Brian Robins, and this fine disc fulfills all my expectations and then some. Almajano produces a most lovely, full, rich, enchanting tone, warm, a sound of a singer completely at her ease. Vibrato is there, but beautifully into the line, something that comes about as part of her natural expressivness, rather than a technique added on for the sake of projection. Her ability to modulate the dynamic of the line is impressive, moving from a thread of voice to full throat in a moment, and all in the service of speaking the text, a vocalism that comes from the inflection of the Spanish. That being said, the sound itself is so attractive that you would probably enjoy hearing her reading from the Zaragoza telephone directory (the easy laugh when we were talking seems to be reflected in the shine which is present in the peasant high spirits of “A Pascual no le puede”, for example.)
There are relatively few recording of this repertoire (itself fairly small, I would think, though it will be interesting to see what musicology has yet to dig from Spanish collections), and I particularly enjoy the combination of Italian styles with the native cross-rhythms and dances of Spain. The continuo work of
Collaborators Rivera, Fentross, and Rico (with accents from the ubiquitous percussionist Pedro Estevan) is lovely, and the recorded sound is clear and flattering. This is a most delectable disc – don’t miss it. If you haven’t yet met Almajano, you are in for a treat. Warmly recommended.