Donna Coleman.

Don't Touch Me: Ignacio Cervantes: Danzas Cubanas. OutBach Music CNO01 (2010), CD.

Donna Coleman is an American pianist. who has lived in Australia for many years, where she is currently Coordinator of the Postgraduate Studies program for the Melbourne Conservatoriurn of Music (Southbank), University of Melbourne. Coleman recorded two albums of Charles Ives's piano music for Etcetera Records in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it was during her quest. to discover the sources be- hind Ives's ragtime-infused works that she discovered the music of "relatively (and unfairly) obscure, nineteenth-century Cuban maestro Ignacio Cervantes (1847-1905)," as she writes in her liner notes for this recording. This compact disc represents the culmination of years Coleman spent researching Cervantes, comparing editions of his Danzas Cubanas, and performing the music. Coleman traces the transmission of musical ideas that occurred when Louis Moreau Gottschalk arrived in Cuba in 1854, adapted the contradanza music he heard, and influenced Cervantes in the process, asserting in her liner notes that Cervantes and Scott Joplin "shared many common musical ancestors going back hundreds of years," and Gottschalk's sojourns in Cuba "effected a profound influence on the course of American (and world) musical history." These Danzas are miniatures--nearly all are thirty-two bar tunes in two parts, the prima (A section) and the segunda (B section), rhythmically anchored by the cinquillo, and only a couple exceed two minutes in length. The effect of listening to the entire disc is akin to dining on tapas. I believe the recording would have benefited from allowing more room sound to blend with the piano, but this is a complaint focused on the engineering. The microphones seem to have been extremely close to the instrument, which was perhaps an attempt to convey intimacy, but the effect is occasionally one of being in a practice room with Donna Coleman that is small enough to induce claustrophobia. Coleman's playing is at turns lively and somber, as the pieces dictate, and her decisions to arrange the Danzas based on key relationships and to set mood and character in contrast heightens the "steamy romance novel" storytelling effect she admits to be after in her liner notes. In addition to Coleman's lengthy liner notes, the booklet includes essays by Gottschalk biographer S. Frederick Starr and Dr. Aurelio de la Vega, composer and distinguished emeritus professor, California State University, Northridge, which situate Coleman's scholarship on Cervantes in a broader music historical perspective while also praising her musicianship. A list of sources and suggestions for further reading are also included, as well as a bibliography of selected published editions for the Danzas Cubanas. The recorded music and the booklet make a delicious combination, which I recommend for all libraries.