Mouvement

«Mouvement» is the title of the second recording project of the Spanish pianist María Parra. As in the case of her first album Rêverie (a term taken from Schumann’s Kinderszenen, Mouvement gets its name from the third piece of the first book from the very well-known cycle Images, composed by Claude Debussy.

A listener who knows Rêverie already, and now approaches Mouvement, will soon understand that there is an extremely coherent conceptual trajectory between both titles, a conducting line in terms of the aesthetics, with autobiographical traits. This allows us to disclose the personality of this outstanding pianist, whose artistic life has been developed between Spain and France.

If Rêverie was an homage to childhood dreams which should not be dismissed (with the works Kinderszenen by Schumann and Children’s Corner by Debussy, among others), then in Mouvement, María Parra immerses us in a dynamic aura, full of vitality and action. The movement concept has two sides in this recording project: the first part suggests the natural movement of air and water, whereas in the second part it is expressed in a more organic way, strictly associated to dance.

This is materialized in a direct way through the subtle language used by Debussy in pianissimo, the two graceful dances by Enrique Granados, the three vigorous dances from The three-corned hat by Falla and, finally, his very difficult Baetic Fantasy as a final culmination. Additionally, with the popular and touching Spanish dances Oriental and Andaluza, María Parra wanted to honour its author, Enrique Granados, on the centenary of his death.

For María Parra, the term mouvement references the realization of a dream, but at the same time it immerses us in the cultural halo of Paris during the late 1800s and the beginning of the 20th century. More precisely, it was an aesthetic and cultural movement which transformed Paris into the indisputable capital of culture: this is of course Art Nouveau, which was born in the context of the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1889. Curiously, it was not only one of the most important movements in the history of art which was forged in this exposition, but also the emblem of the nation itself: the Eiffel Tower.

In this bohemian Paris, which acted as a bridge between two centuries of upheaval, the most important artists coexisted. This included, among others, a crowd of musicians who found in the French capital the best place to spread their output. This was the case of the three composers covered in this recording: Debussy, Granados and Manuel de Falla treated each other with admiration and respect, drinking from the sources of impressionism, Spanish nationalism and fragments of romanticism in Central Europe.