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The Chronicle Review Corner

This is a programme of 17 pieces for violin (Peter Sheppard Skærved) and piano (Roderick Chadwick) composed and arranged by American composer Gregory Fritze. It’s very easy on the ear, although Spain is at times not a country that springs to mind, flourishes aside.

The opener is called Valencia and while it’s an atmospheric piece, the images it invokes are more English pastoral, the scene from a costume drama where they dance under an oak tree. Lovely track, though.

Tenerife does open with a definite Latin dance feel (and a violin melody similar to Manuel, he of the Music of the Mountains, and his Rodrigo’s Guitar Concerto de Aranjuez) so is more Spanish, with some bull fighter-ish little runs on the piano. A short piano solo is evocative of Mike Oldfield or “quietest moments” Supertramp. It’s nicely mournful but is followed by the more chipper Tenerife Dance, less dance-y than the opening of Tenerife and reminiscent of the music you get in old Westerns, so more Mexican. There is a nice interplay between piano and violin, the former playing almost a pop tune and the violin responding in a leftfield fashion.

Buñol must be a slow and mournful place if this more delicate tune represents it; there is a Spanish mournfulness in the violin but again if the album was called English Meditations, it could sound English and bucolic.

There are 17 tracks so we’re not listing them all but Buñol is magnificent, very romantic and Spanish; Cullera is lovely and gentle and flows like water (the city is situated near the discharge of the river Júcar in the Med), while Barcelona Gaudi Dance is as lively as its name suggests (but again could pass as exotic Scottish if it was called Inverary Mackerel Dance).

So easy on the ear and relaxed, it at times just slips by. This is nevertheless an entertaining album, with top class playing on the piano and violin.