Multi-faceted, an untiring teacher, speaker, Professor of Accompaniment at Madrid Conservatory, performer and composer, Gerardo Gombau (Salamanca, 1906 – Madrid, 1971) was above all an innovator, an essential figure in Spain’s musical and artistic renewal since the 1940s. Trained in the city of his birth and then in Madrid where he would become Conrado del Campo’s star pupil, Gombau stood out from his very youngest years because of his profound interest in recovering the historic repertoires (conducting the nine Beethoven symphonies in Salamanca in 1942) but also by permanently including the latest musical manifestations in his concert programmes.

This eclectic essence of his personal artistic tastes was also seen in his creative and musical thought, confirmed in the two compact discs comprising this double album, taking in a representative part of the finest of his extensive musical catalogue. A comprehensive chronological guide beginning in 1944 with ‘Amanecer‘, opening the first of these discs, through to 1971, the date of his death, and ‘Pascha Nostrum: Cantata Pascual‘, the work ending the second, points to the evolution and the stylistic and creative development of the work of a composer of extraordinary vitality and dynamism.

Performances by:
Orquesta Sinfónica y Coro de RTVE
Mariana Todorova, violin
Magdalena Llamas, mezzo-soprano
Carole Sidney Louis, soprano

Choir soloists:
Carmen Ávila, soprano
Carolina Martínez, mezzo-soprano
Ángel Iznaola, tenor
Joseba Carril, bss
Jordi Casas, Choir’s director

Conductor:
Arturo Tamayo

Contents:

CD AUDIO 1:
01. Amanecer (1944) (04:34)
02. Don Quijote velando las armas (1945) (10:26)
03. Variaciones poemáticas (1952) (22:38)
04-06. Sonata para orquesta de cámara (1953) (14:24)
07. Siete claves de Aragón (1952) (17:01)

CD AUDIO 2:
01. Scherzo (1960) (03:03)
02. Música para voces e instrumentos (1961) (07:43)
03. Grupos tímbricos (1970) (18:42)
04. Pascha nostrum (1971) (22:16)

Total time: 121:40