Arvoles
lloran por luvia
The music of the Italian, Turkish and Spanish Jews
1996 / 2005
In his 40 canciones sefardíes (1983) Manuel García Morante compiled and arranged traditional Ladino songs originated in the Balkan area for voice and piano. Alberto Hemsi, born in Smyrna, Turkey (1897-1975), worked for more than five decades gathering a phenomenal number of Judeo-Spanish songs until he published Coplas Sefardíes, sixty folk songs from the Eastern Sephardic tradition which he had harmonized and arranged masterfully for voice and piano. Both García Morante and Alberto Hemsi have managed to be faithful to the ancient testimony of oral tradition and achieved a difficult balance between modern musical language in their pianistic realizations and in the simple melodic organization of the vocal lines.
For this recording Ramón has also performed a number of liturgical compositions original to the Sephardic community of Livorno, Italy. A violin virtuoso and composer, Federico Consolo (1841-1906) was born in Ancona, Italy, and devoted a great part of his life to musical research. In 1892 he published Sefer Shirei Israel-Libro de Canti D’Israele, an anthology of Sephardic liturgy containing traditional melodies sung by the Jews of Livorno throughout the year. Later, he published a second volume (largely unknown until 1996) with harmonizations of these prayers and religious poems, for voice and various musical instruments. Consolo’s musical arrangements were clearly influenced by the Romantic musical style, in particular Italian opera of the 19th century. To our knowledge, Arvoles lloran por luvia includes the first recordings of Federico Consolo’s compositions.
CREDITS
Cantor
Dr. Ramón Tasat
Cantor
Natasha Hirschhorn
Executive producer: Ramón Tasat
Associate producer: Lohn Efraim
Recorded and edited by Prodigital Inc., Washington, DC
Sound engineer: Allan Wonneberger
Mastering: Wolf Productions, Inc.
Graphic design: Estudio Lo Bianco
Program notes: Ramón Tasat
Typography and duplication: Sound Recorders, Inc. Austin, Texas
Recorded at Catholic University, DC, May-September, 1996