ROBERTO GERHARD (1896-1970): Suite from Alegrías, Pandora Suite, For Tenor and Orchestra: Cancionero de Pedrell, 7 Haiku.

Description: This reissue is valuable and attractive for two reasons: one is that the Haiku and Pandora music are unavailable anywhere else; the other is that everything here is quite tonal, much of it based on Catalan folk music (and folk songs from other parts of Spain as well, in the Pedrell work of 1942). Alegrías (1943) is particularly fetching in its Andalusian character and Stravinskian ironies but Pandora (1944) is the major work here, a 27-minute suite from an anti-war ballet which uses both Catalan folk-songs and the oldest "Dance of Death" in existence - the 14th century "Ad Mortem Festinamus" - as a constantly transformed idée fixe. Catalan/French-English texts. Josep Benet (tenor), Orquestra de Cambra Teatre Lliure; Josep Pons. Original 1994 Harmonia Mundi release.