{"product_id":"rodolfo-ritter-manuel-ponce-piano-music-vol-1_aec-picl10367-2","title":"Rodolfo Ritter - Manuel Ponce: Piano Music, Vol. 1","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhile Rodolfo Ritter's repertoire encompasses many well-known and unfamiliar composers, he has made a speciality of Ponce's piano music. He recorded the two piano concertos (for Sterling) in 2013, as well as several solo pieces. Now, for Piano Classics, he embarks on a new adventure, which should win new friends everywhere for an idiom full of charm and optimism, essentially Romantic in spirit and piquantly coloured by the composer's Mexican heritage. A social and cultural revolution followed on the heels of Mexico's political revolution of 1910-1917, as a once largely rural nation became, within a matter of years, predominantly urban. Born in 1882, Manuel Ponce in some ways embodied the outward-facing spirit of that revolution, as the country's first internationally renowned composer of European-style art music ('classical'), and yet in the nostalgia-soaked language of that music evoked a romanticized past. This is the tension explored by Rodolfo Ritter as he begins a multi-volume journey through Ponce's piano output - only the second pianist to do so on record. Ponce was something of a child prodigy, already accomplished and cultivated as both a pianist and composer before he entered the national conservatoire in 1901. Take the dance for the left hand titled Malgre tout, which Ponce was inspired to write in 1900 as a homage to the sculpture of the same name by Jesús F. Contreras - a resonant depiction of a chained and defenceless woman who, \"despite everything\", looks up with hope (not so oblique as a politically charged metaphor). Earlier still is the bel-canto style lyricism of the Misterio doloroso (1899). Another pivotal work for the left hand dates from a full quarter-century later, the Prelude and Fugue which Ponce wrote in Paris while under the tutelage of Paul Dukas. No less schooled by an earlier period of study in Europe, as a pupil of Martin Krause in Berlin, comes the Variations on a Theme by Handel (1906). In the interim, Ponce channelled this classical technique through the melodies and rhythms of his home country in pieces such as the Rapsodia Mexicana No. 1 of 1911.Volume 1 of Rodolfo Ritter's survey contains all these and many more exciting discoveries. As a Mexican pianist, teacher and scholar of German heritage, Rodolfo Ritter is ideally placed to guide us through such unfamiliar territory.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Piano Classics","offers":[{"title":"New \/ CD \/ Manuel Ponce: Piano Music, Vol. 1 Piano Classics","offer_id":49025193804084,"sku":"PICL10367.2","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0790\/7436\/1652\/files\/4491414-3523944.jpg?v=1777911058","url":"https:\/\/www.fye.com\/products\/rodolfo-ritter-manuel-ponce-piano-music-vol-1_aec-picl10367-2","provider":"FYE","version":"1.0","type":"link"}