Platero y Yo
This is the tale of the donkey and the poet. Imagine a sunny Andalusian landscape with billowy hills. Feel how the warm air is scented of figs, pines and daisies. Soft melodic guitar tones and a sensual language help you travel in thought. Here lives the poet close to nature together with his donkey Platero. Catchy music describes their small adventure in a village in southern Spain. A poetic moment in the green is repeatedly interrupted.... The moon breaks through, like a golden egg in a breathless moment....a few irritating children think the poet is a fool....a girl suffering from tuberculosis experiences a moments joy when she rides on Platero....A brotherly meeting with sparrows....a splendid carnival....Platero falls ill and.... The tale is full of warmth and the joy of life and is written like a line of small lyrical paintings, both landscapes and tender portraits of the poet with the donkey. The author Jiménez has captured the eternal and beautiful in everyday occurences. In Spanish-speaking countries, the story is at least as famous and loved as Winnie the Pooh with us. | ||
One of the finest the readers, Sofie Ribbing, and I have, among other places, rendered it to the Nobel Museum in March -03, and -06 in November with great success. A Spanish version - Platero y Yo - were also, with the congenial reciter Gaston Villaman. After his tragic death, I wonder now if I ever will be working with his equal ... I now have a project running, with a new reciter, making a music film with all 28 movements (chapter). It would be the first time in history this was done. | ||
1. Platero 3. Spring 4. Angelus 7. Ronsard 8. The Moon 10. Twilight Games 11. Friendship 12. Swallows 13. Lullaby | 15. Carnival 16. The Well 17. Sunday 18. Return 19. Convalescence 20. Sparrows 21. November idyl 22. The Canary Dies 23. April Idyl 24. The Gypsies 25. Death 26. Nostalgia 27. Melancholy 28. To Platero In The Heaven of Moguer | To the left you have all the movements/chapters. Some of the recordings can be listened to. Some are using Gaston Villaman (sadly no longer alive) as narrator in Spanish and some are with Sofie Ribbing in Swedish |
| Now I have a new narrator and the extensive project to realize the full melodrama as movie has started.... | Some specifications |
Jiménez, Juan Ramón. 1881-1958
The author was born and lived in Andalusia in southern Spain until 1936, when he fled, from General Franco's military coup and the Spanish Civil War, to America, where he served until his death in 1958 in Puerto Rico. In 1956 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. This after half a century have been a prominent figure among Spanish writers. He influenced the young poets of the (19)twenties, including Lorca. His influences included the folk poetry and Spanish classics and French modernists. "Platero y Yo" he wrote in 1914 and followed up with a continuation - "Conversations with Platero" 1917.
Photo: Magnus Thelin
Sofie Ribbing studied recitation during the years 1978-1984 for the Swedish prominent figure of the art of recitation - Ake Nygren.
She has maintained this practice alongside work as an anchor on Swedish Radio.
Among other things, she has appeared in the Swedish Mimensemble and the Mandrill Theatre.
Photo: Magnus Thelin
Mario Castelnouvo-Tedesco 1895-1968
The composer was born in Italy to Jewish parents who originated from both Spain (Nueva Castilla) and Germany (Tedesco). He
studied music in Florence under, among others, the eminent composer Pizzetti
and joined in the early 1920s to the then main composer group where
also the more well-known Respighi was a part. Being a Jew Castelnouvo-Tedesco was forced to leave Italy in 1939 to settle in Los
Angeles where he supported himself by writing film music. Crucial to his oeuvre was the meeting with the guitar master Andres Segovia. At the urging of him, he wrote a guitar concerto, the first of its kind in the 1900s. When
Segovia got to see the notes, he said: "It is the first time that I
find a composer who immediately understands how to write for the
guitar." After
this continued cooperation with Segovia and it was a long series of
works for guitar, both solo and in various formations. It was no less than a hundred works, which would be a quarter of his total production. The music for "Platero y Yo" he wrote in 1960.