Carlos Mena, Susana Garcia de Salazar - Paisajes del recuerdo: Compositores vascos contemporaneos (2007)

Browsing the new-release section of your favorite classical music website, you might find this disc of songs from Spain's Basque country, many of them unpublished and never recorded before, and many of them in the strange Basque language (which is unrelated to any other tongue on the planet) -- performed to boot, by a countertenor. You might dismiss it as too weird. And you would be making a mistake. Countertenor Carlos Mena, who has recorded quite a variety of vocal music, is a native of Vitoria-Gastei in the Basque region and approaches this music with native fluency and confidence. His emotional but not operatic style fits the modest dimensions of these songs. But his most intriguing coup here is his discovery of this music, which runs roughly from the beginning of the twentieth century to its end. Most of the pieces come from the earlier decades, and many can be generally categorized as the kind of national song that sets a folk melody with a piano accompaniment reflecting the technique of art song. In the case of Basque song, however, this results in some fascinating fusions as the unusual meters (think fives, both regular and irregular) of the original songs clash with the more conventional accompaniments. Sample track 21, the Zortzico of Emilana de Zubeldia, to hear the complexity in which even outwardly conservative settings become engrossed. Other songs, in the Spanish or in a few cases the French languages, reflect more influences from the main streams of twentieth century art song, from the post-Impressionist mélodie up to quizzical Spanish modernism, but all share a distinct flavor that turns melancholy or roughly humorous by turns. Commentary and full texts, no matter what the original language, are given in Basque, Spanish, French, and English. Not only for Mena fans and listeners interested in Basque culture, this disc will fascinate anyone who pays attention to the points at which the Western musical system begins to meet musical languages it cannot so easily incorporate, and it undoubtedly deserves extra points for sheer originality.