Zefir Records

The Complete Tonadas

Marcel Worms

The Dutch pianist Marcel Worms presents the complete Tonadas and other piano works by the Spanish composer Joaqin Nin-Culmell, beautifully recorded and performed with the cool crisp phrasing and style of Worms.

The composer Joaquin Nin-Culmell was close friends with Mompou. His father was the Cuban composer Joaquin Nin, his Spanish mother was a singer. His sister is the famous writer Anais Nin. Nin-Culmell led a cosmopolitan life and has been living in Spain, France and the United States. His music is more earthly and energetic than the one Mompou composed. Spanish and Cuban folk music is omnipresent in it. His 4 volumes of Tonadas, with their canciones and bailes (songs and dances), give a kaleidoscopic image of the various regions of Spain, a kind of alternative Iberia, less virtuoso, but more primitive and rough.  The Cuban folk music has been elaborated by Nin-Culmell especially in his 12 Cuban Dances.

In the Cuban Dances for Piano the composer returns to his Caribbean roots. Although he only incidentally visited Cuba, Nin-Culmell was clearly aware that Cuban music formed a part of his musical heritage. The traditional habanera rhythm (originating from Havana, Cuba’s capital city) forms the red thread through these dances. This rhythm later became an  important element of the tango. Through this and through the typical harmonies and voicing are these pieces connected to the dances of ‘real’ Cuban composers such as Ignacio Cervantes and Ernesto Leucona.

In preparation for this CD recording and concerts of the music of Nin-Culmell, Marcel Worms went to Switzerland to visit the Spanish pianist Maria Luisa Cantos, who studied the complete works of Nin-Culmell under his supervision and maintained a close friendship with him from 1963 till his death in 2004.

external links
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press quotes:

MELOMANO This album, an absolute novelty in the world, beautifully recorded and performed with the cool crisp phrasing and style of Worms, a pianist of great stature. 

read the full review (Spanish)

KLASSIEKE ZAKEN A beautiful cd full of beautiful miniatures. Paul Janssen

read the full article (Dutch)

AKKOORD MAGAZINE Sparkling and light.

read the full article (Dutch)