Granados: Liliana, Suite Oriental & Elisenda

In the last of this three-volume series devoted to Granados’s orchestral music, two very different compositional strands are explored. The early Suite oriental reveals his sense of vivid orchestral colour and melodic imagination, couched in the exotic language of the time. Written in a more pared-down style, the one-act ‘lyric poem’ Liliana, a collaboration with the writer Apel·les Mestres, is a four-movement suite in which Granados conjures up a vivid, mythical world. Elisenda is another impressionistic score, both emotive and ethereal, here performed in its arrangement for piano and chamber orchestra. The conductor Pablo González studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and went on to become winner of the Donatella Flick Competition and the Cadaqués International Conducting Competition. He has held the positions of Associate Conductor with both the London Symphony Orchestra and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, as well as Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra of the City of Granada. From 2010 to 2015 he was Music Director of Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya. His recording of Schumann’s works for violin and orchestra with Lena Neudauer and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie won the International Classical Music Award.