Out from under Villa's shadow

From February 14, 2012:

Francisco Mignone is finally coming out a bit from the immense shadow of his older contemporary Villa-Lobos, and this CD from the Cuarteto Latinoamericano should help the Sao Paulo-born composer win some new friends. Though most of these pieces come from Mignone's nationalist phase, his string quartets, like Villa's, are about more than just the folklore, dances, and popular music of Brazil. Both the 1st and the 2nd String Quartets are elaborate and sophisticated works of serious music, with much the same solid structure and appealing forward movement of Haydn's or Bartok's string quartets. The program also includes a number of short, light, traditional Brazilian and Spanish dances, but also two abstract pieces of the highest quality and inspiration: the Two Essays for String Quartet from 1958. These dozen minutes of music demonstrate why Mignone deserves to be classed with South America's greatest composers.

In this new disc from Dorian Sono Luminus, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano make the same persuasive argument for Mignone that they did for Villa-Lobos in their 2009 recording of the complete String Quartets. There's that shadow again!

Fun and moving music from a great Quartet

June 18, 2010:

With 28 years of experience playing string quartets, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano are well-placed to put together a programme like this one. Over the years they've championed (and commissioned or were dedicatees for) many great string quartets by contemporary composers of The Americas. From what I'm sure is a much longer list, they've put together a winning programme of encores for this CD.

The Cuarteto Latinoamericano made a big stir lately with their recordings and performances of the complete String Quartets of Villa-Lobos. Here they present a craggy Valsa by Villa's compatriot Radames Gnattali. Roberto Sierra wrote his Mambo 7/16 for the Cuarteto, and they've mastered its tricky rhythms (I'm assuming that took some significant work, even for these accomplished musicians.) The Italian Stefano Scodanibbio is represented by pieces from his Mexican Songbook, which are oddly, and interestingly, twisted versions of Mexican popular songs. I'm sure these are popular as encores, and they're scatted throughout the CD as individual pieces. But I enjoyed listening to them together as a group on my iPod.

The five short pieces by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez that make up Cinco para Cuarto are much more serious in tone. They are dedicated to the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, and are presented here to the best possible effect. Another more solemn work, by Osvaldo Golijov, is the Yiddishbbuk, three lamentations that commemorate child victims of the Nazis at Terezin. This is such powerful music!

The programme closes with works by the Mexican Jorge Torres Saenz (another work with tricky rhythms: La Venus se va de juerga), the Spaniard Adolfo Salazar (his exotic Rubaiyat), and the American David Stock (the haunting Suenos de Sefarad). It's all enjoyable and often moving music from an amazing group.

November 2, 2015 update: Just heard from Cuarteto Latinoamericano's Twitter feed about the recent passing of David Stock. I'm listening to Suenos de Sefarad in his memory.

An important Villa-Lobos box-set

From August 7, 2009:

"The writing is crazy, but it has a point. It's the added salsa and when you play the quartets you have to make them spicy." - first violinist Saúl Bitrán

From 1995 to 2001, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano recorded all 17 of the Villa-Lobos string quartets. These were released on the Dorian label on six individual CDs, with two or three pieces on each disc, often with early, middle, and late works mixed together for variety. The performances were hailed by most critics as the definitive performances, which is saying quite a bit. Villa's string quartets were already well-served on CD, with complete cycles by the Bessler-Reis quartet on (the late, lamented) Brazilian label Kuarup, and by the Danubius Quartet on Marco Polo. There were also recordings of individual works by the Brazilian String Quartet, the Stuyvesant String Quartet, and the Hollywood String Quartet, among others.

As good as some of those other performances are, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano own these works; they are the best advocates I know for this amazing music.

Now Dorian has put together a box-set of the six CDs, remastered and nicely packaged. The Dorian CDs always sounded great, and their remastering for this set polishes things up so you feel even more in the presence of the musicians. Dorian has added a seventh disc: a DVD of the group performing #01, and an interview with the musicians talking about Villa-Lobos and his music. There's a really excellent booklet with valuable notes by Juan Arturo Brennan.

The members of the Cuarteto Latinoamericano - the three Bitrán brothers (Saúl, Arón, & Alvaro) and Javier Montiel - have lived with these works for a long time, and are very thoughtful about the music not just in terms of technique and musicality, but as part of a broader idea of Latin American culture. Having recorded the entire cycle of 17 string quartets and performed the cycle five times (with another coming up in Mexico City later this month), these musicians rate this music very highly. In the DVD interview Saúl Bitrán puts these works in the same league as the cycles by Bartok and Shostakovich, and says that Villa-Lobos' string quartets are much more creative and much more original than those two great 20th century series.

The string quartets include some avante-garde features (especially #03 from 1916, which was the musical centrepiece of the 1922 Semana de Arte Moderna in Sao Paulo). According to Arón Bitrán, "Back in 1916, before Bartok or Shostakovich, he wrote a complete movement with left-hand pizzicatos and double harmonics; things no one else had ever thought of." If they flirt with the exoticism which most people connect with Villa-Lobos they do so only to a certain extent. You might not recognise the string quartets as being by the same composer as the Sixth or Tenth Choros. At the end of the cycle, the string quartets become more neo-classic and less emotional. The final works, written when Villa-Lobos was ill, are meditative and suffused with "saudade", the Brazilian version of nostalgic sadness. It's really sad that Villa didn't get a chance to finish his 18th String Quartet, which he was working on when he died. Only sketches remain (they're in the Museu Villa-Lobos).

Keep an eye on the Cuarteto Latinoamericano - their excellent website - http://www.cuartetolatinoamericano.com - is a good way to do this. This is the group's 30th anniversary year; let's hope they're around for a long, long time to come.