Newman Digs Granados

I found this appreciation of Granados' Goyescas the other day, from the pen of Ernest Newman...

``The Goyescas are ... a fascinating work. The music, for all the fervour of its passion, is of classical beauty and composure. The harmony is rich but never experimental. The melodies have new curves, the rhythms new articulations. Informing it all is a new grace, a new pathos, a new melancholy. Not only the separate pieces themselves but the themes of them have a curious poetic individuality, so that to meet in in a later piece with a theme from an earlier one is like seeing a definite personality step across the scene; but, above all, the music is a gorgeous treat for the fingers, as all music is that is the perfection of writing for its particular instrument. It is difficult, but is so beautifully laid out that it is always playable: one has the voluptuous sense of passing the fingers through masses of richly coloured jewels ... it is pianoforte music of the purest kind.''


(my italics). Clearly Ernest Newman was a good pianist! Mortals such as your humble correspondent can play (some of the) Dansas Espanolas but the Goyescas are hard !

Granados was a Schumann fan (obviously); one wonders if Newmann appreciated Schumann as much as he appreciated that **** toe-rag Wagner... (Adrian Mathias tells me that Roger Scruton said of Schumann that he was the ``first composer to write for the piano as a piano''. First equal with Chopin and Liszt I suppose .... at least if you ignore some Beethoven)


Click here for last week's bon mot
Click here for next week's bon mot

Return to Thomas Forster's home page