Joan Guinjoan’s compositions combine a deep sense of form, an urge to explore and a creative impulse arising from his preoccupation with sound itself. All this eventually translates into a spontaneous language despite incorporating a great variety of procedures and a careful and elaborate use of timbre and sound texture that is always surprising to the ear and fruitful to analyse. Models are not applied arbitrarily to the sound material – in Guinjoan’s music everything is organically derived from sonic imagination, throughout a long career that began in Riudoms and has never abandoned the light of the south. In this respect, his free assimilation of languages enriches his multifaceted sonic universe with an amazing agility thanks to his solid technical background.
The works for voice included in this recording gather a representative sampling of the different periods in his prolific oeuvre, from Cant espiritual indi (1964) for soprano and piano, to On són, oh mar, els déus i llurs imatges (1993), originally for tenor and piano, here transposed to the soprano range. In Guinjoan's vocal works one notices that writing attaches a particular importance to the intelligibility of the text, together with a very personal lyricism expressed through microtonal oscillations and displacements across a broad range of intervals. In this respect, the performances of the soprano María Hinojosa and the baritone Joan Martín Royo are splendid. Gifted with powerful instruments, they move in their sonic world with expressive passion and neatness, thus raising the genre – extremely demanding in Guinjoan’s case – to a superlative level. The recording was made at the auditorium of the Residence for Researchers CSIC in Barcelona during the tribute concert on the occasion of the 80th birthday of the composer. Its sound is quite clear, with Lluís Miquel Soler i Farriols’ editing contributing to the excellent result.