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.

Fine music played by an eloquent champion

From October 30, 2009:

Every once in a while the natural time-span of the CD - three-score minutes and ten - points to a great collection of works by a single composer. For example, Villa-Lobos's complete works for solo guitar fit nicely on one CD, providing a rare chance to give some focus to a notoriously unfocussed composer. Now violist Eliesha Nelson has put Quincy Porter's seven works that feature her instrument onto a superb new disc from the Dorian label.

Like so many composers from America, Quincy Porter found in 1920s Paris both inspiration and a congenial circle of fellow composers. He studied with Andre Caplet and Vincent d'Indy, and would have come across the greatest musical minds of the day: Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Debussy, and Ravel. But he came back to America with his own American voice.

Porter was an accomplished violist, as were Mozart and so many other composers. The result was an inside-out knowledge of the string quartet form (which explains the high quality of Porter's 9 quartets), and also an amazing body of music for the instrument. Included on this disc are works for solo viola, duos with piano, harp, harpsichord, and violin, and the 1948 Concerto for Viola & Orchestra. They come from the late 1920s ("Blues Lointains" from Paris, 1928), through the American works of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

The Duo for Violin & Viola (1954), like Villa-Lobos's 1947 Duo, looks back to Mozart's two great works for this intriguing combination of instruments. It has an often acerbic sound, though one in which the viola's natural sadness comes through. The second movement of this work is a stand-out: wistful (as Nelson calls it in her liner notes) but not sentimental. That's probably because in these performers' hands, the music is allowed to swing.

Nelson has strong support on this disc, from the technical team that provide lifelike sound in the chamber works especially, and from her fellow musicians. John McLaughlin Williams conducts the Northwest Sinfonia in the Concerto, and also plays the piano, harpsichord, and violin. What, he couldn't learn the harp for the 1957 Duo? (Actually, harpist Douglas Rioth is fine in extra-inning relief.) But Eliesha Nelson is the star here: her playing is eloquent, assured, and lovely in tone. Musicianship of the highest order is on display, from her first concept to the final note.

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.