Femke IJlstra & Celia García-García: Colores del sur
TRPTK

Colores del sur (Southern Colours) seduces the ear with a set-list designed to delight and exemplary performances by saxophonist Femke IJlstra and pianist Celia García-García. In place of selections from the Western classical repertoire, the two venture to southern Spain (Brazil too) for sultry enticements by Isaac Albéniz, Manuel de Falla, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Darius Milhaud, and others. As steeped in the south as the album is, it also includes pieces by Maurice Ravel and Kurt Weill, composers whose love for the tango and habanera sometimes seeped into their writing. The cross-pollination between Spain and France is a recurring theme of the album, and the Spanish connection extends to the musicians too, with García-García having roots in the country; Femke, on the other hand, hails from the Netherlands. The two met, fittingly enough, during a performance at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and soon thereafter established their Duo IJlstra-García collaboration. Outside of the joint project, their schedules are full with teaching and performance engagements.

The connection the two have to this music is obvious the moment Albéniz initiates the album with “Tango” from 1890's España, Op.165. The duo casts a spell with the delicacy of García-García's lilting touch and IJlstra's artful essaying of the work's sultry melodies. Her soprano saxophone sings so sweetly, the playing is as close to human vocalizing as could be imagined. “Evocación,” the album's other Albéniz work, is the first movement from the suite Iberia (1905-08) and reflects the influence of the French composers with whom he'd become familiar after moving to France in 1894. While a dance dimension is still very much present in the writing, the work's atmospheric character calls Debussy to mind.

As irresistibly sinuous is Ravel's Pièce en forme de Habanera, which joins L'heure espagnole and Rapsodie espagnole as other Spanish-influenced works in his oeuvre. Villa-Lobos's haunting O canto do cisne negro is elevated by the magnificent rendering the duo bring to it, with IJlstra's gentle, vibrato-tinged alto wafting over a firm foundation of rippling piano patterns. Speaking of singing, the jubilant melodies in Milhaud's “Brazileira” (the third movement in his Scaramouche suite) are so ravishing, you'll want to replay the tune the moment it's finished. The album ends with Weill's Youkali, as seductive a tango-habanera as there could possibly be and one the duo brings to life with obvious relish.

Interspersed amongst the standalone pieces are three multi-movement works. French composer Paule Maurice is represented by the five-part suite Tableaux de Provence, a work she wrote between 1948 and 1955 for the saxophonist Marcel Mule. Maurice and her husband apparently holidayed with the Mule family in Provence, which inspired the musical character of the Tableaux. Considering that the farandole is a lively chain-dance, it hardly surprises that the effervescent “Faranduolo di chatouno” would sparkle brightly; the gentleness of the love song “Cansoun per ma mio,” on the other hand, proves a perfect showcase for the duo's lyrical side, while “Dis Alyscamps l'amo souspire” mesmerizes for the nuance with which they render Maurice's haunting material. Returning to the joyous spirit of the opening movement, the closing “Lou Cabridan” caps the suite on a brilliant lively note.

Like Albéniz, de Falla relocated to France for a period of time, arriving there in 1907 and writing the Siete Canciones Populares Españolas, featuring arrangements of Spanish folk songs, seven years later. From the alluring “El paño moruno” to the sprightly “Canción” and “Polo,” the material engages as strongly as the album's others. The final suite, Cinq danses exotiques, comes from Jean Françaix, who composed the material in 1957 as part of an eight-part suite for two pianos. Four years later, five were arranged for saxophone and piano, each one referring to a Latin American dance. Breezy and carefree, the music swings, naturally, never more so than during the frothy “Mambo” and freewheeling “Merengue.”

June 2022