Seven Pieces

For Piano


Commentary
Recording
Related texts
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Commentary

These Seven Pieces, conceived with a purely educational objective, aim to bring together, as a whole, different degrees of technical difficulty and, at the same time, to form a compact work that allows both the isolated interpretation of each one of the numbers and their global execution. Its aesthetic approach, for the benefit of its original pedagogical destiny, is of great simplicity, with most of the pieces being composed within eminently tonal assumptions.
The first piece, Gloss for two voices on a cantus firmus, is an eminently contrapuntal work, in which the right hand develops a counterpoint for two voices, in a clearly imitative style, while the left hand develops only the cantus firmus to the which alludes to the title of the piece, which is none other than the Cat’s Theme from Peter and the Wolf, by Sergei Prokofiev. Said theme, exposed in the original work by the clarinet, is here transformed beyond recognition by giving each of its notes a very long length, as was customary in the treatment of the cantus firmus in ancient polyphony.
The second piece is a brief Scherzo, markedly rhythmic in character. It is followed by a Cradle song, eminently singable; in it, the melody is located in the center of the piano range, and must be developed alternately by both hands, highlighted by an accompaniment that passes from the low to the high register, and with which it should never be mixed.
The fourth piece is entitled Through the mirror, alluding to the fact that the writing of both hands is absolutely symmetrical throughout the entire movement, with the imaginary mirror in which one hand reflects the other being located on the central D of the keyboard. The fifth piece, entitled The lost steps and subtitled Habanera for Alejo Carpentier, in just remembrance of his splendid novel, recreates a stylized habanera in such a way that it is more suggested than anything else: the melody begins several times, but does not seem to want to be never completed.
The sixth piece is a new Scherzo, not as rhythmic in character as the previous one, based on a thematic design continuously interrupted by notes and chords played in the extreme tessituras of the instrument. Finally, the seventh piece, entitled Modes, also has a subtitle: Homage to Maurice Ravel. It is divided into several related sections, each of which is composed in a different way, following a progression by ascending fifths: thus, the first section is written in Locrian mode, the second in Phrygian, the third in Aeolian, the the fourth in Dorian, the fifth in Mixolydian, the sixth in Ionian, and the seventh and last (with the same thematic idea as the first) in Lydian. Apart from the deliberately impressionistic neo-modal setting, in the sections written in the Aeolian and Mixolydian modes a very brief Ravelian "quotation" takes place: a four-note design that evokes the serene and restful atmosphere of the Pavane for a dead princess.
These Seven Pieces for piano were written in March 1987, and are dedicated to my son Luis. They were premiered by the Russian pianist Eugenia Gabrieluk at the Manuel de Falla Auditorium of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, in December 1991.

They were recorded in 2011 by pianist Ana Benavides and published on the CD "Diálogos concertados", from Bassus Ediciones label, together with the Twelve studies and the Lindaraja Prelude.
The edition of the Seven Pieces has a cover designed by Paula Villanueva Sanz.

Recording (selection of the CD "Diálogos concertados", by Ana Benavides)

I. Gloss for two voices on a Cantus Firmus



II. Scherzo



V. The lost steps (Habanera for Alejo Carpentier)

Related texts

Tomé Pantrigo, Laura
José Luis Turina and his pedagogical music for solo piano. Didactic contribution to his Seven pieces for piano (1987)
End of Studies Project presented at the Superior Conservatory of Music of Castilla y León. Salamanca, September 2020)



Manuel Carra and José Luis Turina, two essentials
By José Luis Temes
Notes to the booklet of the CD Diálogos Concertados by Ana Benavides - 2021
Listening to the album proposed by Ana Benavides today is musically delightful and musicologically essential. Delightful for being based on a repertoire of pure enjoyment, simple in the most beautiful sense of the expression. And essential because these pieces offer us the unpublished character of two Spanish musicians of the present, admired for different sides of their practice that those presented here.
[...]
Carra shares the protagonism of this album with José Luis Turina, his friend of almost half a century. And if the didact Carra has shown us his composer's side, it is now the composer Turina who shows us his didact's side.
There are more than a dozen formidable works for the virtuoso piano in José Luis Turina's catalog, which also includes other works not designed for the concert hall, but for classroom learning. But such is their beauty and perfection within the limits that Turina imposes on himself that Ana Benavides has done very well to convince the composer to be a part of her international record publication.
The Siete piezas that open the album are from 1987 and are dedicated to his son Luis. Despite the pedagogical will of each one of them, not all of them are of elementary difficulty. The habanera that flies over Los pasos perdidos is masterful; sweet the archaic counterpoint variation -the teaching of Francisco Calés, from which so many musicians of our generation have benefited!- on the theme of the cat from Peter and the Wolf (in the first piece, Glosa). And the lesson in harmony that Turina gives us in Canción de cuna, probably the «prima inter pares» of this collection, is masterful.
Nor would we be exaggerating if we were to say that each of the Doce estudios para piano, from 2011, is a little gem. Twelve delights, each preceded by a brief illustrative poem by Turina himself (the only Turinians that those of us who follow and admire him have been able to read; there is nothing more exciting than this still unknown side of the composer). If Nieve is a perpetual movement of sweet poetry, a new Canción de cuna is one of almost contemplative stasis; if Legatissimo is a study for the practice of said articulation, Invención proposes with success in its subtle objective a rereading of 18th-century harpsichord literature. This collection of studies is dedicated also successful in its subtle purpose "to Pilar Sanz".
Not specifically didactic, but dedicated to a young pianist is his Preludio de Lindaraja (which takes its name from one of the Alhambra patios, which also inspired composers such as Debussy and Albéniz). It was composed in 2017 for the Madrid pianist Luis González Lladó. The listener does not perceive -or at least we do not detect it- the Andalusian evocation in these staves. Rather, a generating cell, concrete and evanescent at the same time, that Turina repeatedly raises, but without actually specifying or glossing over it.
The composer side of a great pianist like Manuel Carra; and the less known didactic pianism of a creator like José Luis Turina make this album, in addition to being very beautiful, essential for those of us who love Spanish music of the most recent decades. Reaching us through the hands of a pianist like Ana Benavides guarantees its enjoyment. Great music, indispensable as a story, and delightfully played. Could anyone else give us more?

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