ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (01/24/85)
I am posting this review to net.music and net.music.classical because I think some readers of both newsgroups will like this music. From the liner notes: Spain has always been realistic and, at the same time, has always possessed the everpresent intuition that madness is a remote thing which can be attained with infinite slowness by those who have the patience. In Spain where all men are solitary, where everyone bears a world within himself, where nothing is more universal than individuality, where all men are filled with both darkness and light, where there have been, and still are, very distant men, full of uncertainty and of hope, madness takes root with quite extraordinary facility. La Folia (Harmonia Mundi CD 90.1050) is a collection of variations on a theme that dates back at least to the 16th Century. They are performed by a group called Atrium Musicae de Madrid. This music was written by Gregorio Paniagua, the group's leader. Most of the variations sound like fairly normal Renaissance dances, played on appropriate instruments: recorders, crummhorns, viols. But sanity ebbs in places, both in what happens to the music and what instruments are used. You will hear snippets of American folk songs, movie themes, and other things played on instruments like the tabla, jaw-harp, chainsaw, and automobile. The playing is superb, and the players never allow insanity to overcome musicality (well, perhaps we should make an exception for the chainsaw). Don't let lack of interest in "early music" or "classical music" stop you from hearing this one.