Cantes antiguos del flamenco

The new composition, strictly speaking, a Concerto for Viola and orchestra, is structured in nine chants, with a prelude and a finale, which leads us, passing through the most dramatic styles of flamenco, to a tremendous ending, an explosion of rhythm and colour. The 'flamenco voice' in this work is the intense, beautiful or sometimes heartbreaking sound of Tabea Zimmermann, the Queen of an instrument - the Viola - which, in our opinion, has all the register and possibilities of being the perfect echo of the shocking “song of moan” of an imaginary flamenco voice. The flamenco percussion plays an essential role here in the dialogue with the viola soloist and gives the orchestral texture an unusual 'flamenco' air. Mauricio Sotelo writes these pages to celebrate the Centenary of an event that marked the future and survival of authentic flamenco, the “Concurso de Cante Jondo" devised and organised 1922 in Granada by Manuel de Falla and Federico García-Lorca.