Nocturnos de Andalucía

Andalusian Nocturnes

Suite concertante for guitar and orchestra & for piano and orchestra 

• 1. Brindis a la noche (A Toast to the Night)
     In this movement, the composer proposes a joyful toast to the Andalusian night.
  2. Sonrisa truncada de una estrella (Shattered Smile of a Star)
     The firmament cries on a clear night. On the very same day, a brave young man saw his life shattered like the smile of a star. As if in a dreadful dream, five o’clock strikes: the time of the fiesta. The orchestra cracks like a whip in a fortissimo of horns and strings together.
  3. Danza de Marialuna (Dance of Marialuna)
     In Lorenzo Palomo’s fantasy, Marialuna is a girl that, like the girl in the poem of Juan Ramón Jiménez, dresses herself in white to dance for her beloved, hoping that he will join her in the dance. The music explores the very roots of Flamenco interweaving the Arabian melismas with elements of Jewish origin.
  4. Ráfaga (Gust of Wind)
     A slight gust of wind trembles momentarily in the quietness of the night.
  5. Nocturno de Córdoba (Nocturne of Córdoba)
     In the fragrance of a Córdoba night, we hear the guitar’s pearly tones like drops of dew on the leaves of orange trees and jasmine vines.
  6. El Tablao (The Flamenco Stage)
     In his youth, Lorenzo Palomo used to go to the Zoco in his beloved Córdoba, where, in summer, there would be an improvised tablao Flamenco. It was there, in direct contact with the artists of Flamenco, that his great passion and feeling for this style of music was born, later providing a veritable fountain of inspiration from which spring the Andalusian Nocturnes.
     Lorenzo Palomo