The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs awarded a rosette to Stephen Hough’s earlier Gramophone Award-winning Hyperion recording of Mompou, and this successor is equally fine. Música callada comprises twenty-eight exquisite miniatures, brief in duration yet rich in allusion: music which makes its mark with subtlety, understatement and a unique economy of means.
REVIEW:
Hough is the ideal guide to the music of Mompou. He wholly inhabits the music’s mystical atmosphere, its holy simplicity. Exquisite sensitivity is matched by a steely strength. Sounds coalesce and insist on their presence, before disappearing into the ether. Austerity blends with warmth.
