Word: flamencos
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Teresa Berganza, the young Spanish mezzo-soprano, carried on this tradition in particularly disheartening fashion last Thursday night, filling the entire second half of her recital with a remarkably undistinguished lot of songs by Granados, de Falla, Montsalvatge, and the Brazilian Villa-Lobos. There were cradle-songs and tormented Flamenco--like songs, and two or three varities of that hardy perennial of the concert platform, the "delightful" song about a timid or a talkative lover, which ends with an exasperated little yelp from the singer (and polite titters from the old ladies in the audience). On a balmy night...
...myriad of descriptive effects. And the weightiness of the theme was relieved by occasional touches of humor, most strikingly with the singing of the three-headed Geryones (Tenors Pier Francesco Poli, Pieo de Palma, Sergio Pezzetti), which sounded a little like Tnrandot's Ping. Pang and Pong in flamenco...
...extraordinary range of nuance not often found in the guitar. Celin, 24, followed his father-again with classical selections, but in a mistier, more rhapsodic vein. Angel, 14. offered a limber, clean-lined performance of the Bach Chaconne from Partita Number Two. Pepe, 18, whipped through a selection of flamenco songs with remarkable fire and dexterity, thrumming out the music's traditional chords with steel-sure fingers. Later the four came out together to play the adagio and allegro from Telemann's Concerto for Four Violins...
...style that contains Byzantine, Arabic, Hebraic and Moorish influences, flamenco reaches so far back into the gypsy's dim and restless history that no one can tell whence it came. Entirely improvised, its techniques have been handed down through countless generations by the Andalusian gypsies of southern Spain. The themes are basic as life: love, loneliness, birth, death. The music is so rhythmically complex that it is too sophisticated for all but the best of modern guitarists. The lyrics evoke the same ingenuous moods as the music: "I love you so much that I would like to carry...
Playing for Himself. Born in a gypsy wagon near Sète, a seaport near Marseille, De Plata is of the best flamenco tradition. He is illiterate, cannot even read music. His father was a horse trader who taught his son the guitar and encouraged him ("Manita, you have remarkable hands"). For the next 20 years, roaming southern France in the caravan, De Plata stayed out of school to spend his time practicing and listening to other gypsy players...