The French in Spain

The French in Spain

ARTISTS: JoAnn Falletta; Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
COMPOSERS: Claude Debussy; Maurice Ravel; Jacques Ibert
LABEL: Naxos
CAT ID: 8.574615 (747313461578)

GRAMMY® CATEGORIES SUBMITTED INTO:
Orchestral Performance
Engineered Album, Classical
Producer of the Year, Classical (Bernd Gottinger)

This album presents orchestral works by three French composers who saw Spain as a paradise of warmth, fragrance and colour, whether real or imagined. From the vivid evocations of Debussy’s Images and Ibert’s Escales, to the dances and landscapes that inspired Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole, these masterpieces of Impressionism show the considerable impact Spanish culture had on French composers in the early 20th century.

JoAnn Falletta

GRAMMY Award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and music director laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. She has guest conducted many of the most prominent orchestras in America, Canada and throughout Europe, Asia and South America. As music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major American ensemble. Credited with bringing the Philharmonic to an unprecedented level of national and international prominence, she is a leading recording artist for Naxos, and won her most recent GRAMMY Award in 2019 as conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra for Kenneth Fuchs’ Spiritualist (8.559824). Her Naxos recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (8.559331) received two GRAMMY Awards in 2008. From 2011 to 2014 she served as principal conductor of the Ulster Orchestra, with whom she made her BBC Proms debut and recorded six highly acclaimed Naxos albums. She was the first woman and the first American to fill this post. Falletta is a member of the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has served as a member of the National Council on the Arts, is the recipient of many of the most prestigious conducting awards and was named Performance Today’s Classical Woman of the Year 2019.

For more information, visit www.joannfalletta.com.

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

Founded in 1935, the GRAMMY Award-winning Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) is Buffalo’s leading cultural ambassador, presenting more than 120 classics, pops and youth concerts each year. Since 1940, the orchestra’s permanent home has been Kleinhans Music Hall. In March 2018, the BPO became the first American orchestra to perform at the Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw, Poland. In 2022, they made their 24th appearance at Carnegie Hall celebrating the life and works of Lukas Foss, former BPO music director. Over the decades, the BPO has matured in stature under leading conductors William Steinberg, Josef Krips, Lukas Foss, Michael Tilson Thomas, Julius Rudel, Semyon Bychkov and Maximiano Valdés. During the tenure of JoAnn Falletta, the BPO has rekindled its distinguished history of radio broadcasts and recordings, including the release of around 50 albums of diverse repertoire on the

Naxos and Beau Fleuve Records labels. The Philharmonic’s recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (Naxos 8.559331), featuring soprano Hila Plitmann, received GRAMMY Awards for Best Classical Vocal Performance and Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and its recording of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua (Naxos 8.559885-86) received a GRAMMY Award for Best Choral Performance.

For more information, please visit: www.bpo.org

Bernd Gottinger (Producer & Engineer)

Over a forty-year career, Dr. Bernd Gottinger has produced and engineered classical music recordings for numerous prominent national and international labels. Recognized by the Recording Academy as a nominee for Best Producer of the Year, Classical in 2020, his portfolio includes a GRAMMY® Award for engineering Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua (Best Choral Performance) and a 2024 nomination for Lukas Foss’s orchestral works with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (Best Classical Compendium).

Stravinsky: Fairy Tales represents his latest engineering and production work, reflecting the technical and musical standards built across his career. An alumnus of The Peabody Institute and The Juilliard School, Dr. Gottinger earned a Ph.D. in Musicology from New York University in 2007. He continues to balance studio production with education, serving as a tenured Full Professor and Director of the Sound Recording Technology program at the State University of New York at Fredonia, a position he has held since 1999.