Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos – The Decca Legacy

This box brings together a collection of Decca recordings displaying the dynamism of Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, including material previously unreleased on CD.

In the generation after Ataúlfo Argenta, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos became the most prominent Spanish conductor, both at home and abroad. Just 25 when he was appointed Music Director of the Orquesta Nacional de Espana in 1962, he trained it into a formidably adaptable and accomplished ensemble. Through the 1960s, he became known to international audiences not least thanks to the Decca recordings compiled complete for the first time in this set.

Of German parentage, but growing up in Burgos, Frühbeck de Burgos had an innate sympathy with both musical traditions of his heritage, and Decca played to this strength. His Schumann (Rhenish Symphony) is impulsive and virile, his Mendelssohn (Midsummer Night’s Dream) is springy and sparkling with detail. His label debut came in February 1965, as accompanist with the London Symphony Orchestra to the Romanian violinist Ion Voicu in a beautifully moulded version of the classic Mendelssohn/Bruch coupling on LP.

Frühbeck de Burgos also knew how to draw out an authentically vivid Spanish colour-palette from foreign orchestras. His 1966 version of Falla’s El amor brujo (the mezzo soprano Nati Mistral) still enjoys classic status. In 1967, he recorded his own picturesque orchestration of the Suite Española by Albeniz, long-unavailable on CD. Likewise, his collaborations with Narciso Yepes present a compelling spectrum of lesser-known guitar concertos when compiled together, from the elegantly neo-classical Concertino of Salvador Bacarisse to the more adventurous set of Tres Graficos by Maurice Ohana, which Frühbeck de Burgos recorded in his sole album for Deutsche Grammophon.

The pianist Alicia de Larrocha also found in Frühbeck a congenial recording partner, who had a naturally idiomatic grasp of the concertos written for her by the likes of Montsalvatge and Surinach. Though she made several versions of Falla’s Noches en los Jardines de España, her 1983 Decca recording with Frühbeck is particularly atmospheric thanks to the conductor’s grasp of the moods and feelings behind the notes. This digital-era album became his last Decca recording, included in this Original Jackets box, which includes a new essay by Peter Quantrill on the conductor’s life and career.