Massenet: Le Cid - Ballet (Fiedler)

Cover design by Herschel Levit

Vive l'Espagne! It seems as though, prior to the arrival on the international music scene of native Spanish composers like Albeniz, Granados and Manuel de Falla, the French had a monopoly on musical representations of their southern neighbor.  This point was driven home by Andrew Kazdin and Thomas Z. Shepard in the liner notes for their 1971 album "Everything You Always Wanted to Hear on the Moog" (which featured "semi-conducted" versions of Chabrier's España, Lecuona's Malagueña, a suite from Bizet's Carmen and Ravel's Bolero), which stated with irony that "the consistency of our Spanish program is marred only by the fact that Lecuona was not a French composer."  Well, here's some more zestful Spanish music by a Frenchman, zestfully performed by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops:

Massenet: Le Cid - Ballet Suite
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston "Pops" Orchestra
Recorded July 10-11, 1945
RCA Victor set DM-1058, three 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 47.18 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 32.25 MB)