Now Farley has turned her attention to the songs of the Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona (1895–1963), with results that I find totally compelling. Rarely can her warm yet brilliant voice have been in better estate. With ravishing floated high notes and plangent Hispanic tones lower down in the range, she has crafted in “On a Night like This” a most romantic and seductive album, atmospherically recorded by producer Rita Hermeyer. So far as versatility is concerned, the British pianist John Constable is himself no slouch. Associated in my mind with more cerebral activities (performing Górecki and Knussen in his capacity as principal keyboard player for the London Sinfonietta, or providing stylish concerto solos and continuo contributions in Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi as a regular collaborator with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields), he turns himself here into a cogent exponent of Lecuona’s trademark sensual languor in slow tempos and rhythmic verve in faster ones.

To such ends, the selection and ordering of numbers out of the composer’s 400 songs has been artfully done. Instead of a facile alternation of moods, Farley and Constable have chosen to present the songs in little groups of two or three at a time that harmonize emotionally with each other. Thus, for instance, the candid diatonic beauty of the refrain in Allá en la sierra is so placed as both to illuminate and to contrast with the insinuating chromaticism of the next song, Tu no tienes corazón. (That last word, by the way, is as pervasive in Lecuona’s world as its German equivalent, “Herz,” is in Schubert’s.) Again, the quicksilver syncopations of Que risa me da lead tellingly into La comparsa, an evocative mood-piece in which eruptive rhythms darkly subvert the surface glitter of the carnival procession. Incidentally, two songs, ¡Mira! and Devuélveme el corazón, are rather puzzlingly listed with texts by José Serebrier. I found out on inquiry that they have survived only with English words, so Serebrier has made a skillful job of creating new Spanish versions for them; it would have been helpful if BIS had explained this somewhere in the otherwise informative booklet.

As a representative of his country’s musical culture, Lecuona may not offer the scope and depth that distinguish, say, Ginastera among the composers of Argentina. But this collection makes a strong case for him as a master, and a richly varied master at that, of the romantic song, and I cannot imagine how it could have been better done.

--Bernard Jacobson, FANFARE