LEONARDO BALADA (b.1933): María Sabina (Susi Sánchez, Ángel Sáiz, Fernando Tejedor [narrators], Dionisio: In Memoriam (Carlos Hipólito [narrator]).

Description: María Sabina is the story of a Mexican-Indian priestess condemned by her people for opening her holy rituals to the outside world. The music is in Balada's trademark blend of advanced, 1960s-Penderecki-like avant-gardism, neo-romantic lushness and ethnic influences, especially appropriate to the heady, hallucinatory and psychologically brutal subject matter. A kind of neo-romanticism is more to the fore in the dramatic cantata Dionisio on the life of the poet and political figure Dionisio Ridruejo, with both folkloric and avant garde interpolations at moments of dramatic climax. Spanish-English texts. Orchestra and Chorus of the Comunidad de Madrid; José Ramón Encinar.