María de Pablos (1904-1990) Orchestral Works

[Wheesht]

Two orchestral works by María de Pablos (Segovia 1904- Madrid 1990) were released last year in world premiere recordings from 2019 on the Spanish Cezanne Producciones label, the symphonic poem 'Castilla' from 1927 and 'Dos apuntes musicales españoles' from 1930.
She studied at the Madrid Conservatoire from the age of ten, her teacher was Conrado del Campo. In 1928 she was the first woman to win a place at the Academia Española de Bellas Artes de Roma in a competitive examination. Her scholarship required her to study abroad for some time and in 1930 she went to Paris to study with Paul Dukas and Nadia Boulanger. She did not return to Rome, however, nor did she stay in Paris, but abandoned her scholarship. Her catalogue of works is quite short and she appears to have suffered many hardships in the macho society prevalent in Spain at the time. Why she did not finish her scholarship in Rome is not known nor is it clear today why she was admitted to the Sanatorio Esquerdo de Carabanchel in the 1940s and remained there as a chronically ill patient until her death in 1990.

Here is the catalogue of known works:

Ave Verum (1927), Castilla (1927), Sonata Romántica (1929), Dos apuntes musicales españoles (1929-30), Siete canciones (1929-30) and La cabrerilla (1934).
The Cezanne CD has a rather short playing time of 44', but the two works on it are beautiful. They are also here (Castilla) and here (Dos apuntes I) and here (Dos apuntes II).
 

[semloh]

Thank you for this! It's lovely music.
Maybe mental illness accounts for the sudden termination of her European sojourn. How sad that she should spend the second half of her long life stuck in an asylum. Conditions would have been grim. 

[Mark Thomas]

It is indeed lovely music - rather sensuous I thought, like listening to a Klimt painting.