Turina: Piano Music, Volume 10

The tenth volume in Jordi Masó’s ground-breaking series of the complete piano music focuses on the years of Joaquín Turnina’s maturity and the works he called a Ciclo Pianístico. El Castillo de Almodóvar, op.65 and Rincones de Sanlúcar, op.78 are both memorably evocative and descriptive, deeply rooted in the Spanish soil. Elsewhere Turina takes classic forms, such as the toccata, fugue, partita and prelude and brings to them a more abstract but richly nuanced sensibility. The previous volume in this series has brought considerable acclaim: ‘In Masó you have an ideally committed and affectionate master of the idiom, finely recorded.’ (Gramophone, of 8572915). This is volume 10 in this comprehensive Turina series. The last volume (8572915) was very well received with both American Record Guide and Gramophone extolling the virtues of the playing (”an affectionate master of the idiom” wrote Gramophone).This disc concentrates on Turina’s maturity with music that is often abstract, though there are also his famous more colourful evocations as well. This is sparsely recorded repertoire. The famous figure of Alicia de Larrocha has recorded the Preludios and Partita but they are marooned in a big DG 10-CD box. Likewise Martin Jones has recorded El castillo de Almodóvar, but in the context of a 5-CD box of Spanish piano music generally. Masó is generally considered the world’s leading current exponent of this composer’s music.