Manuel Blancafort’s music has a concise tonal directness that draws on his fondness for French composers. His Cançons are not simply evocative but embody an increasing use of the Noucentist aesthetic: the Catalan cultural movement of the early 20th century that was a reaction against Modernisme. Blancafort rejected the Romanticism and Wagnerian pathos of the modernist Lied in favour of Classicism and beauty – sentiments he shared with his Catalan contemporaries Toldrà, Gerhard and Mompou. Intimate, sensitive and playful, his Catalan songs connect both to his country’s past and also to a wider European musical culture.

Vol. 1 in this series is on 8.579012: ‘One would be hard pressed to imagine a more sympathetic interpreter of Blancafort’s songs than the impressive Catalan mezzo-soprano Anna Alas i Jové, whose keen artistry brings delicate nuance and subtle shadings to the Catalan texts’, wrote American Record Guide.

Pianist Miquel Villalba has recorded a sequence of five albums of Blancafort’s piano music. Vol.3 is on 8557334 and is praised in ClassicsToday.com: ‘Pianist Miquel Villalba upholds the reference standards he’s set in Volumes 1 and 2. His warm tone, sensitive ear for nuance, and utterly natural phrase shaping almost are as addictive as the music itself’.