AUGUST 28, 2025
(++++) SILVERY AND SHIMMERING
Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Platero y Yo—An Andalusian Elegy. Niklas Johansen, guitar. OUR Recordings. $23.99 (2 CDs).
Multimedia is nothing new: opera, after all, has been around for 400+ years. But the meaning of multimedia and the methods of presenting it have changed with the times for centuries and continue to evolve today. Now OUR Recordings has produced an especially creative and enjoyable – and handsomely packaged – multimedia version of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Platero y Yo, expanding the usual bounds of CDs into an encroachment into DVD territory.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) was one of the most important guitar composers of the 20th century and had a 36-year collaborative relationship with Andrés Segovia (1893-1987), which resulted in some three dozen guitar works – of which Platero y Yo, written late in Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s life (1960), is one of the most notable. It is a setting for narrator and guitar of 28 excerpts from the eponymous prose poem written in 1914 by Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881-1958). The original work is discursive and nostalgic, consisting of observations and reminiscences that the narrator presents to and discusses with his donkey, Platero. Since plata means “silver,” platero means “silvery,” and that word is a good description of the gently glowing impression created by the prose poem. Platero symbolizes purity and naïveté and becomes a suitable foil for the narrator as he thinks and reminisces about life, the countryside, and the simple pleasures that seem to be fading as the world (unknowingly except in retrospect) rushes headlong toward World War I.
The close integration of Jiménez’ words with Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s illustrative guitar music makes Platero y Yo fully effective only in its original form, but the composer did authorize the work to be performed without the spoken text. That is how it is presented here – but the production takes a clever turn by incorporating the words (including English translations) into the accompanying booklet, which means that even without the original narrative in Spanish (whose cadences are carefully and thoughtfully reflected in much of the musical material), a listener can get a sense of the overall concept of Platero y Yo and can, in effect, become his or her own narrator in his or her chosen language. This adds considerably to the effect of the music, because while some of the inspirations for the settings can be readily inferred from their titles (“Spring,” “White Butterflies,” “The Canary’s Flight,” “Lullaby”), others are confusing or meaningless without the text (“Ronsard,” “Sunday”) and still others are designed to contrast with rather than complement the verbiage (“The Well,” “The Crazy Man”). The guitar writing is exceptionally communicative throughout, and it is certainly possible to listen to the entirety of Platero y Yo – which lasts nearly two hours – without knowing the “framing tale” for the music. But that does a disservice to both Jiménez and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, inappropriately turning this carefully conceived and thought-through work into a kind of background music.
This recording is especially interesting for taking Platero y Yo into genuine multimedia territory by incorporating into the presentation a set of thoroughly delightful and sensitively conceived illustrations by Halfdan Pisket (born 1985). Pisket is a visual artist who works primarily in the graphic-novel idiom, but here he shows himself sensitive to a long-ago fantasy world that lacks any of the usual drama and intensity of graphic novels: the illustrations are gentle, subtle, and often mildly amusing – fitting the notion of Jiménez’ narrator that Platero understands everything being told to him even though he lacks language in which to respond. So this Platero y Yo recording invites participatory involvement throughout: listening to the music, reading the words either before or during every item, and looking at Pisket’s evocative illustrations that underline and comment on the music in much the same way that the music underlines and comments on the texts.
Throughout, the music remains central, as it should, and Danish guitarist Niklas Johansen is a splendid advocate of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s concept. The composer arranged the 28 pieces in four suites of seven items each, but there is no inherently musical reason for thinking of these highly individualized miniatures as interconnected. Does it mean something that the first three suites conclude with rather crepuscular pieces (“Melancholy,” “Nostalgia,” “Death”), and the fourth with a kind of envoi (“A Platero en el cielo de Moguer,” Moguer being Jiménez’ home town)? Listeners/readers/observers have plenty of opportunities to think about this and other elements of Platero y Yo throughout the presentation – and Johansen’s first-rate playing invites contemplation as well as straightforward enjoyment of his virtuosity and his sensitivity to Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s interpretation of Jiménez’ vision. Platero y Yo is a landmark among 20th-century guitar compositions and is justly celebrated by guitarists for its musical, expressive and illustrative qualities. The top-notch playing here, and the well-conceived and involving multimedia elements of the overall presentation, should help bring the beauty and meaningfulness of the work to a considerably wider audience.
https://transcentury.blogspot.com/2025/08/silvery-and-shimmering.html