The sensuous, light, almost rasping voice of Estrella Morente gives authentic inflections to these songs of Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca. In the notes, Morente describes developing her better-known flamenco voice for “more lyrical singing”. The results are tender and strange. Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas (Seven Spanish Folk Songs) combine traditional melodies with art song, especially in the complexity of the piano accompaniment, played with shading and exuberance by Javier Perianes. Lorca, always a musician as well as a writer, used folk songs he had known since childhood in his Canciones españolas antiguas, simple descriptions of old Spanish life: Moorish girls from Jaen, young pilgrims on their way to Rome, muleteers and boys going out to plough.
