MUSICA CALLADA

Herbert Henck (piano)

Mompou:
 Música Callada - Book 1 - 4

"Listening to this disc is rather like entering a retreat. There's a rapt, contemplative atmosphere around these 28 miniatures written between 1959 and 1967 as an attempt to express St John of the Cross's mystic ideal of 'the music of silence'. Practically all slow-moving, using repetition as a structural device but avoiding keyboard virtuosity, and rarely rising even to a forte, they seem to acknowledge descent from Erik Satie via the impressionists, though harmonically much freer and sometimes harsher – even, occasionally, stepping inside the area of atonality. No 3 has a childlike innocence in its folkloric theme: Mompou's fascination with bell-sounds finds echoes in Nos 5, 17 and 22. Overall there's a sense of tranquil self-communion which, paradoxically, exerts a strange spell on the listener. Herbert Henck, a specialist in 20th-century music, plays this collection with tender sensitivity and an ideally suited luminosity of tone, and he's finely recorded. An exceptional and haunting issue."
Gramophone - Classical Music Guide 2010