Wilhem LATCHOUMIA

Why did you also choose to record the transcriptions of

El amor brujo

and

the excerpts from

El sombrero de tres picos

In concert I often play the

Fantasía bætica

alongside excerpts from

El amor brujo

because they make the fantasia easier to understand – the audience gets a better

grasp of how the music functions. Actually, Villa-Lobos and Bartók did the same

thing with the publications in which they collected folksongs and folk dances

whose musical materials also appear in their own more ‘abstract’ works. If the

audience is aware of these two aspects, it can grasp the unity and significance of

the composer’s intentions. That said, I never view these transcriptions as carbon

copies of the originals, even though there’s obviously still a link with them, but

really try to make them works for piano; indeed, I regard the piano version of

amor brujo

as a suite in its own right, another world. Yet at the same time as I see

the work in exclusively pianistic terms – and you’re going to find this paradoxical of

me – I’m also constantly thinking of the orchestra. I can’t sit at the piano without

conjuring up the idea of the orchestra, which determines an essential part of my

playing, of my sonority. I need colours, a profusion of harmonies and polyphonies. I

hope I’ve succeeded in bringing that out.

WILHEM LATCHOUMIA