The music of Catalonian composer
Federico Mompou (1893-1987) was not often played during his lifetime, partly due to his dislike of the process of self-promotion and partly due to the music's extreme self-effacement in an age of rampant individualism. It was the establishment ofminimalism as a going concern that helped bring his music to concert programs:
Mompou's short piano pieces are minimal in the best sense of the word.
Mompou studied in France and absorbed the lessons of
Debussy; his treatment of harmony avoids goal-direction and sets up fine shades of color. But his language is pared-down compared with
Debussy's, and as often as not his works have abstract titles (like tempo indications) --
Debussy without the Impressionism, you might say.
Mompou was influenced by Catalan folk music, not quoting tunes but often beginning pieces with simple melodies of characteristic intervallic content and then proceeding into material that offered very subtle contrasts with the opening music. He wrote a modest amount of piano music, a few songs, and a very few other works. The two discs of piano music presented here cover typical works from various phases of his career, omitting only his valedictory Música callada (Music That Has Fallen Silent). The early Impresiones Intimas, published before World War I, have more conventional tonal shapes but offer strong hints of
Mompou's extreme concision and simplicity.
Mompou's music needs a pianist who is precise and restrained without being cerebral, and Dutch artist
Paul Komen fills the bill admirably. Sample track 8, the "Profond-lent" movement from the Cants Magic's (Magical Songs), for an example of
Mompou's music at its most limpid and paradoxically hypnotic -- in the hands of a lesser pianist, it's not hypnotic at all but almost random.
Komen is supported well by engineer Peter de Moses on this 1988 recording, made in Hilversum;
Komen brings the dynamics down to minimal levels at a few places, emphasizing the closed-room-in-a-closed-house quality of
Mompou's music, and the engineers are with him all the way. This is an excellent introduction to a fascinating composer whose reputation is on the rise. As an introductory document, however, the booklet is skimpy; it gives only a brief sketch of
Mompou's life and does not discuss any of the music specifically. Worse, it fails to translate
Mompou's work titles, some of which are in Catalan and thus not easily susceptible to translation by those who do not speak Spanish or French.