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Intimo; Latin American Canciones for Voice & Guitar
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Rambles.net, Intimo; Latin American Canciones for Voice & Guitar >>
It’s hard to imagine a pairing that could surpass the level of passion and musicality that Yolanda Aranda and Enrique Coria achieve in Intimo. When getting lost in the music, I found it easy to forget that this is a performance by only two, so rich is their pairing. Aranda’s full, deep voice glides effortlessly, but never carelessly, across melody, tempo, and rhythm. She gives even the simplest air a shape that, in less capable hands, would otherwise sound banal, if fairly pleasant. (Singers learning your craft: pay attention.) Complimenting Aranda’s performance is Enrique Coria on guitar, with a playing that is graceful, precise, and damn near acrobatic. Both performances could easily stand on their own, either a cappella or as solo guitar: Aranda and Coria each give so much to the music it’s hard to decide whether to listen to the duet or pick one or the other to concentrate on.
What also makes their performance of every song so striking is the fact that Intimo was recorded direct to two-track analog. This not only lends Intimo the sonic warmth that digital recordings sometimes lack but also, and more importantly, recording direct to two-track means that this is a stripped-down, bare-bones recording with no place to cover up hesitations or errors, no overdubs, no layering of effects, no phony emoting. Intimo is pure, honest performance.
The songs Aranda and Coria cover come primarily from Argentina and Mexico, with a sprinkling of music from Galicia, Spain and Peru. Styles include ranchera and vals-ranchera, canción and vals-canción, escondido, huapango, bolero, chacarera, vals-peruano, pasillo venezolano, and zamba. The booklet included with the CD contains brief descriptions of each composer, background information on each song, and lyrics in Spanish and English translation (although the emotional quality Aranda and Coria imbue the tunes with makes translation nearly superfluous). Intimo covers all itches: great music, great performances, and a little ethnomusicology.
—Tom Bowden is Contributing Review Editor to The Education Digest and Managing Editor of Tech Directions. 08/09/02 >> go there
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