The most widely performed of all of Montsalvatge’s work is Cinco canciones negras. Each song is a distinctive work of art with individual character. The fourth song, a lullaby, figures in Stephen Sondheim’s list of “Songs I wish I’d written.” By incorporating musical idioms from Cuba that had developed there a century earlier among the Catalan colonists, the composer slyly injected his music with a distinctly Catalan musical style, getting around the censors of the Franco regime that forbade such displays of ethnic pride.

Montsalvatge’s Concerto breve had a prominent advocate: the pianist Alicia de Larrocha, to whom the work was dedicated. After the work was denied a significant prize, Montsalvatge made copies of the score and sent them to a dozen pianists. De Larrocha bit. She programmed the work immediately and performed it around the world throughout her career. “In this work you can hear Ravel’s influence with a touch of Stravinsky, without losing its strong Spanish flavor,” says pianist Jenny Lin. “It is a stirring work of keyboard virtuosity in which the pianist constantly engages the orchestra in spirited dialogues.”

Montsalvatge’s Poema concertante for violin and orchestra was commissioned by Henryk Szeryng, the internationally renowned violinist. Szeryng asked Xavier Montsalvatge to write a shorter work that he could perform as an alternative to Ernest Chausson’s Poème for violin and orchestra. “One of its most unusual features is the extended unaccompanied cadenza with which the soloist begins after a brief orchestral introduction,” says the violinist Rachel Barton Pine. “The only other known piece in the repertoire with such a scheme is Ravel’s Tzigane. Poema concertante is as satisfying to play as it is to listen to, being beautifully lyrical with moments of great virtuosity.”