Reviews

• This most important release focuses a much-deserved spotlight on the spiky drive and color of flamenco music [that] has remained a basic constituent of Surinach's style...but his range has widened to encompass a kind of pan-Iberian monumentality which is particularly evident in the Symphonic Melismas of 1993. [It] projects a harsh, mysterious and monolithic grandeur which the composer's own language captures most fittingly: "An orchestral rite of fantasies in simple motion growing to structures of passion." Surinach's fondness for tight spare textures, single-note repeated motifs, percussive beats, blocklike constructivist syntax -- all these traits are on splendid display in this fiercely tempered twenty-four-minute triptych. The Double Concerto reflects Surinach's continuing fascination with bold and jagged dynamic oppositions [giving] both soloists virtuoso opportunities. The program concludes with [the] zesty, joyous early work -- the Sinfonia Chica of 1957. This thirteen-minute celebration of the Spanish vernacular is typical of the kind of vivid and vivacious scores Surinach was turning out during this prolific decade. "Olé" is the best response to this release.
  
  Paul A. Snook, Fanfare Magazine