Nash Ensemble Hyperion CDA 67889 ***

Some of the most famous music evoking Spain was written by French composers. And it was while studying in Paris that Seville-born Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) was steered towards a nationalist path ("música española con vistas a Europa") by his fellowcountrymen, Albéniz and Falla. Turina's music is mildflavoured, and only one of the works recorded here, the shortest – La oración del torero (The bullfighter's prayer) for string quartet – is at all well-known. Elsewhere, in the First Piano Trio, Second Violin Sonata, Piano Quartet in A minor and Escena andaluza (for the unusual line-up of viola plus piano quintet) it's as if he can't make up his mind between a kind of European academicism and the attractions of his native Spain. However everything on the disc falls very easily on the ear in these fine performances by the Nash Ensemble. http://iti.ms/Hf7TXq MICHAEL DERVAN