Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) was a Catalan-born, Spanish composer. His two early teachers were the pedagogue Felipe Pedrell (who also taught Granados and Manuel de Falla), and Arnold Schoenberg. From Pedrell, Gerhard learned to express his strong Catalan roots, while Schoenberg turned him into a Modernist. To escape the Spanish Civil War in the ‘30s, Gerhard relocated to England, where he became a leading avant-garde composer during the final decade of his life. 

A series of Chandos recordings in the 90s covered Gerhard’s tough but rewarding late works: the four symphonies, the Concerto for Orchestra, and the Harpsichord and Piano Concertos. That series also included the Symphony Homenaje a Pedrell, a work Gerhard wrote for his late teacher’s centenary in 1941, which quoted some of Pedrell’s own musical themes. The final movement was extracted with minimal changes to be played as a 12-minute solo concert piece, renamed Pedrelliana. It is not at all avant-garde but overtly Spanish in a similar way to mid-period Falla.

The same description applies to the two ballet scores of the 1940s...