Ms. Letona's performance on all the pieces is absolutely beautiful.  A must have for all piano fans.
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The quality is outstanding. The performance with love and respect for the author.
Muchas gracias por sacar del olvido y salvar música tan linda.
Con todo mis respeto.  Sincerely yours,
Dr Oscar Betancourt (cubano hasta mis raices más profundas)
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Quoted below is a note I sent directly to Maria Letona, the performer on this long awaited recording. I must confess, I am already a big fan of Rene Touzet, so much so. I was moved to meet him in his later years.  If you are following a thread based on your attraction to Cuban music, either classical or popular, and, of course, these two genres have long been  connected,  
you might remember the beautiful melodies which swept the world off its feet, composed by the great Ernesto Lecuona (who incidentally did encouraged the young Touzet),  then I would recommend going directly to the second half of this marvelous CD with Touzet's charming and engaging Danzas, then backtrack to the first half of the CD which is yet another revelation.  This is all music in a classical modern "romantic" tradition, in addition to its  specific Cuban underpinnings, deep music, which will grow on you more and more as you live with it. The unique musical consciousness of Rene Touzet, evident in Letona's performances on this CD, will also grow on you and cannot help but be a very rewarding experience.  This said, I highly recommend this CD.

Thanks for the wonderful and important CD, I will look forward hopefully to others in the future. Maestro Touzet must actually be historically the most prolific composer of Art music who also had such an extensive involvement with the "popular" forms in his life. I have virtually everything he recorded and  his "popular"/dance music and "latin jazz" itself was wide ranging and most accomplished. How could this extensive knowledge not also inform his  piano compositions in subtle ways and thus make for some  unique music in that genre. It is very interesting for me to hear his compositional "decisions" having also some idea of all the other things he played and created during his career as a bandleader and all the great popular melodies, rhythms, and harmonies he knew, not to mention his own extensive compositions in the popular realm as well.  Part of what made his popular music so exceptional in the first place was his prior earlier classical background. This CD presents his rarely heard compositions for piano by someone who worked directly with the composer, and like all Art, words like "classical" and "serious" seem somehow to mislead from their thoroughly enjoyable nature, with emphasis on the '"joy".

Zeno Okeanos
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