A serial beginning; a neo-romantic future

Guerra-Peixe: Symphonies no. 1 and 2; Nonet

Here's a welcome release in the "Music of Brazil" series from Naxos, a must for everyone interested in the classical music of that great country. It's their version of Mostly Mozart: Not Just Villa-Lobos. A few years ago I reviewed an earlier disc in the series that included music by César Guerra-Peixe, performed by the same forces on this album: The Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra under Neil Thomson, though this time we have two choirs added: the Goiânia Symphony Choir and the Goiás Youth Symphony Choir.

Guerra-Peixe was born, and died, about 30 years after Heitor Villa-Lobos; his music represents a major shift in the classical music of Brazil. After World War II, serialism came to the country in the person of Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, a pupil of Paul Hindemith. Guerra-Peixe and a number of his colleagues formed the forward-looking Música Viva group under Koellreutter's guidance.

By the 1940s Villa-Lobos, once the firebrand revolutionary who established new music in his home country - he was the only composer represented in the Semana de Arte Moderna in São Paulo in 1922 - now represented the musical establishment. Villa had moved away from modernism towards an idiom heavily inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach, tinged with folkloric content, a merger of African, European and Indigenous folk musics. Villa was firmly opposed to serialism, and never even dabbled in it, unlike modernist colleagues like Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland.

There are two works on this disc that represent Guerra-Peixe's serial period: the First Symphony, from 1945-46, and the Nonet, from 1945. The Symphony is a fine example of a serial work, severe and spiky; but still, this is quite accessible music. The Nonet is written for flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello and piano. Guerra-Peixe must have known Villa's Nonetto, written during his peak modernist phase in 1923, but the two works have little in common. That's partly a question of scope: Villa's interpretation of the number "9" was stretched to include a complete mixed choir (for up to 12 separate voices!), a large battery of percussion instruments, and the doubling of the flute with a piccolo, and the alto saxophone with a baritone sax. And the contrast in style is also clear: Guerra-Peixe's work is austere and inward-looking, but Villa's is, in a word sprawling. Villa's Nonetto is a great work, perhaps his greatest; Guerra-Peixe's Nonet is remarkable, a masterpiece, perhaps, but it seems like it was time for the young composer to move on.

Considering the controversy of Música Viva's reaction against Villa-Lobos in the 40s and 50s, it's a surprise that in the late 50s Guerra-Peixe should have made the same move that Villa made in the late 1930s, from modernism (Villa) or serialism (Guerra-Peixe) to nationalism through popular and folkloric music. It's perhaps no coincidence that Villa-Lobos died in 1959, and Guerra-Peixe's new tonal style came to fruition in his Symphony no. 2, "Brasilia".

The Brasilia Symphony is an out-and-out romantic work, fiercely nationalistic, and quite beautiful. The choral passages are stirring. With its modern new capital, Brazil was moving ahead, and it had a new generation of musicians leading the way: Santoro, Guarnieri, Mendes, Guerra-Peixe, as well as another Koellreuter pupil: Tom Jobim.

The wonderful cover art is Sol nascente, by Pablo Borges.

This album will be released on May 15, 2025.
 

Music from Santoro's Sixties

Claudio Santoro: Symphony no. 8, Cello Concerto

As one of the top Brazilian composers of the middle and late 20th century, Claudio Santoro stayed on top of the latest musical trends, but always kept an eye on the tradition created in part by Heitor Villa-Lobos, his Bachian, Brazilian forebear. More than 30 years younger than Villa-Lobos, Santoro spent time in Paris, studying with Nadia Boulanger, so Villa's modernism was absorbed at the source. Though Santoro ventured into atonality, under the influence of another teacher, Hans Joachim Koellreutter (who also taught Antônio Carlos Jobim), there are as many similarities between the two composers as there are differences. The split between the "Nationalists" and the "Serialists" that came about when Koellreutter started Musica Viva is in this case rather permeable.

This is especially apparent in the Cello Concerto, which Santoro wrote in 1961 (two years after Villa's death). The cello was Villa-Lobos's instrument, along with the guitar and piano, and he wrote a number of great cello concertos and other works featuring the instrument, which I'm sure Claudio Santoro knew well. Cellist Marina Martins gives a spirited performance of the work in this new recording from Naxos's estimable Music of Brazil series, with able support from the Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra. Though it was written in Berlin during a historic geopolitical crisis and amidst revolutionary musical changes, the Cello Concerto shows at least some remaining touches of Brasilidade, if not the full-scale national (and at that point conservative) sound of late Villa-Lobos.

Santoro's Symphony no. 8 comes from the following year, 1962, when Santoro was back in Brazil, teaching at the University of Brasilia. Symphonies loom larger in his oeuvre than in Villa's, and this work makes its mark through its intensity and depth of feeling. A vocalise in the second movement Andante - beautifully sung here by mezzo-soprano Denise de Freitas - hearkens back to Villa-Lobos's most famous work. It's supported by dark murmurings and ejaculations from the orchestra, and bookended by the similarly expressionistic first movement and a dramatic, rhythmically propulsive finale.

By 1966 Santoro was back in Berlin, where he wrote the Três Abstrações (Three Abstractions) for string orchestra. These are wonderful short character pieces - two or three minutes each - that make use of a serial technique to create alternating moods of mystery, dread, and, in the final piece, perhaps some hope for transcendance. By 1969 Santoro, who was not in the good books of the military dictatorship in Brazil, was at work in Paris, where he wrote his Interações Assintóticas (Asymptotic Interactions - a term taken from the current mathematical research of a physicist colleague of Santoro's). This is a very cool ten-minute work that makes use of quarter tones, beautifully coloured by Santoro's clever use of every instrument in a large orchestra. Olivier Messiaen once said that Heitor Villa-Lobos was the greatest orchestrator of the 20th century, and Claudio Santoro is carrying on this tradition. This is such an entertaining piece, and one that showcases a virtuoso orchestra in the Goias Philharmonic, under Neil Thomson.

By way of an encore, the disc ends with One Minute Play, a work from 1966. It's a tiny, clever, perpetual motion machine for strings, and it must be a great deal of fun to play. What a wonderful ending for a challenging but always interesting disc.

Orchestral music of a major Brazilian composer

César Guerra-Peixe: Symphonic Suites no. 1 & 3; Roda de Amigos

César Guerra-Peixe was born and died about 30 years after Heitor Villa-Lobos, and though he initially took a completely different tack, in the end he came to much the same musical place: a mix of folkloric and erudite strains, of indigenous Brazilian, African and European traditions. Like Villa, his mix of European avant garde and popular music sounds especially Brazilian. This character is brilliantly illustrated by the wonderful painting on the album cover: J. Borges's Forró Sertanejo, which shows a colourful, multi-ethnic mix of traditions of dance and instrumental music.

In the 1920s Villa-Lobos brought Brazilian music into the modernist world, but he later rejected serialism, which came to Brazil with Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, a student of Paul Hindemith and a refugee from Naziism. Guerra-Peixe studied with Koellreutter, and was a member of the "Musica Viva" group that promoted atonality. As with Villa-Lobos, the folkloric strain in Guerra-Peixe's music runs deep. But the progressive European strain - modernism for Villa, serialism for Guerra-Peixe - is never completely submerged. Both composers continue to blend both in their later music.

The two Symphonic Suites recorded here in this new release in the essential "Music of Brazil" series are both from 1955. The Symphonic Suite No. 1 ‘Paulista’ begins with an insistent phrase reminiscent of the beginning of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1, from 1930. The work is full of dance rhythms gathered from folk tunes of São Paulo and the surrounding countryside. Guerra-Peixe has put together an appealing mix of mainly tonal dance tunes with the odd atonal passage for spice. The 2nd movement, Jongo, is an Afro-Brazilian dance that often reminds one of the music from the following decade written by Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Philip Glass. The remarkable fourth movement, Tambu, is a moving liturgical procession that contrasts the brass and drums with intersessions from the strings. I was reminded of the Vorspeil: Concert of Angels from Mathis der Maler, written in 1932 by Guerra-Peixe's teacher's teacher Paul Hindemith.

By the way, in 1954, the year before Guerra-Peixe's first Symphonic Suite, Villa-Lobos had written his own symphonic tribute to São Paulo: his massive 10th Symphony, "Amerindia", for the 400th anniversary of the city's founding. However, I'm thinking that any similarities between the two works are more likely to come from a common source: Villa's own Bachianas Brasileiras suites from the 1930s and 40s. These are the source for so much of Brazil's music - both classical and popular - from then until today.

Guerra-Peixe's 2nd Symphonic Suite, "Pernambucana", uses the music of his second home, Recife and the surrounding area of Pernambuco. The music encapsulates the Carnaval de Pernambuco, with the dances of the North-East colourfully presented by a large orchestra with a large percussion component. The folkloric content has a sophisticated envelope: besides the large-scale Choros of Villa-Lobos, especially no. 6, completed in 1942, I hear echoes of Gershwin and Aaron Copland, as well as a host of Hollywood film composers. Guerra-Peixe was himself an active film-scorer; he has 19 composer credits at IMDb. Guerra-Peixe was much more open to jazz influences than Villa-Lobos ever was; the 2nd Symphonic Suite often has the sound of the American big band, and this music anticipates the Henry Mancini's music of the 60s.

The third work on the program is Roda de amigos, from 1979. The Roda is a group of musicians playing together in a circle; the amigos in this case are Guerra-Peixe's own friends. The composer creates pictures of each friend playing a woodwind instrument featured in the four movements: grumpy bassoon, stubborn clarinet, melancholy oboe and mischievous flute. So the work is a clever combination of Peter and the Wolf and the Enigma Variations.

These are all works designed for a large orchestra of virtuoso soloists and a conductor who can keep many plates spinning, mastering complex rhythms along the way. Neil Thomson manages everything with aplomb, and the Goias Philharmonic Orchestra is very much up to the task here. This is the tenth release in the Naxos Music of Brazil series, and it's providing yet another example of the many fine composers who have been in the Villa-Lobos shadow for too long.

 

Charming music from a great eccentric

Lord Berners: Ballet Music, Les Sirènes, Cupid and Psyche
 

Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners, aka Lord Berners is one of the great English eccentrics. He wrote his own epitaph, for example, which appears on his gravestone:

Here lies Lord Berners
One of the learners
His great love of learning
May earn him a burning
But, Praise the Lord!
He seldom was bored.

Though he hung out with such forward-looking artists as Igor Stravinsky, Salvador Dali and Gertrude Stein, his music (except for some early works) isn't especially avant garde or modernist. Rather, it is accessible, tuneful and light.

Lord Berners by Bill Brandt, 1945

"I wonder if by any chance you are free to dine tomorrow night? 

It is only a tiny party for Winston [Churchill] and GBS [George Bernard Shaw].

There will be no one else except for Toscanini and myself."

Indeed, the music often sounds much like superior English Light Music, in the style of Eric Coates or Percy Grainger. The charming 30-second Fanfare, though, hearkens back to Façade, by William Walton & Edith Sitwell, while the Habanero from Les Sirènes is awfully similar to Darius Milhaud's Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit. So progressive to a degree, though his models were 20 to 30 years in the past.

The key word here is "charm". It doesn't require any deep thought, but as ballet music (with choreography in both ballets by Frederick Ashton) it shouldn't. More than an hour of uninterrupted charm is a true gift.

The wonderful cover painting is Edward Burne-Jones's "Cupid Delivering Psyche", from 1867.

This album will be released on March 11, 2022.

Grace and glamour

Ottorino Respighi: La bella dormente nel bosco

Respighi wrote this delightful Sleeping Beauty opera for the puppeteer Vittorio Podrecca in 1922, and though the composer later adapted it as a full-blown opera, it still has all the charm of a puppet production for children. Charm is the driving force in this production from Sardinia, beautifully presented on Blu-ray by Unitel and Naxos. When Coleridge talked about the "willing suspension of disbelief", he said that a fantastic story requires "human interest and a semblance of truth". This is amply supplied by Charles Perrault's classic story, left intact in the libretto of Claudio Guastalla, and enhanced by Respighi's music. The visual spectacle and stage effects are impressive, but it's the gorgeous music that makes this special, both as fantasy and real human interest. Though it's full of musical in-jokes - references to Wagner and Stravinsky and popular music - there's no need to worry too much about detective work, since Respighi piles up beautiful melodies one on top of the other. The grace and glamour of the whole package makes this an opera everyone - even children - can enjoy.

Piano concertos from an important Brazilian

Almeida Prado: Piano Concerto no. 1; Aurora; Concerto Fribourgeois

The latest release in the marvellous Naxos series The Music of Brazil features the great composer José Antônio de Almeida Prado (1943-2010). One of the most important recording projects of Brazilian music in the past decade was Aleyson Scopel's survey of Almeida Prado's complete Cartas celestes for the Grand Piano label. Though these works were mainly for piano solo, there were three in the official series of 18 that added other instruments (#7 is for two pianos and symphonic band, #8 for violin and orchestra, and #11 for piano, marimba and vibraphone). As well, after he completed the first work in the series, in 1975, he wrote Aurora, for piano and orchestra, which he called an "unofficial Cartas celestes, because it’s not numbered in the same series, but does share the same universe, the same heart, the same élan." What a marvellous work this is, especially as well played as it is by Sonia Rubinsky, the pianist known to most of us as a Villa-Lobos specialist.

There are two other important works for piano and orchestra here: the Piano Concerto no. 1 is the only numbered piano concerto by Almeida Prado. It's a one-movement work from the early 1980s that takes a four-note motif and mashes it about in the Beethoven manner. Rubinsky's virtuosity is required, and in evidence, here, as are the Minas Gerais Philharmonic's players' considerable skills. Fabio Mechetti's task is to ensure both a steady pulse and a sense of coherence across a complex of shifting rhythms, timbres and other sound events.

My favourite piece, though, is the Concerto Fribourgeois, written in 1985 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth. It's a post-modern take on neo-classicism, with appearances of musical guests both unlikely (Stockhausen, Messiaen and, once again, Beethoven) and likely (Bach himself, of course, including the famous B-A-C-H motif, but also Villa-Lobos in his Bachianas mode). This is as much fun listening to as it was, I am sure, to play. Bravo to these fine musicians, and to Naxos for this well-researched and beautifully recorded program.

Here's a short documentary on Almeida Prado from 2019, featuring Sonia Rubinsky and Fabio Mechetti.



This review is also posted at The Villa-Lobos Magazine.

This album will be released on May 8, 2020.

Clever, dynamic, charming symphonies

Leopold Kozeluch: Symphonies, vol. 3

I keep expecting the Leopold Kozeluch Symphonies series from Marek Stilec on Naxos to run out of steam, but with each new release I'm surprised by how clever, dynamic and absolutely charming the works of this Bohemian composer are. Born between Haydn and Mozart, Kozeluch's works share many of both composers' strengths: strong forward propulsion, clear structures and rich harmonies, but also surprising detours, touches of wit and whimsy, and a strong sense of musical story-telling. "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading!" says Laurence Sterne, "Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page." I believe the same thing can be said for music, and Kozeluch's B-flat Major Symphony, "Irrésolu" is a perfect example. Like Haydn's Symphony no. 60, "Il distrato", this work includes extra-musical content, but as a characteristic symphony rather than a programmatic one.  Again like Haydn, Kozeluch has no need for extra-anything; his abstract orchestral music is so dynamic and vital on its own. But a connection to literature and the stage never hurts, and adds further charm to this already charming music. Kozeluch's music, while in the orbit of the two great Austrian composers, has its own character, which once again is so pleasingly brought forward by Stilec and the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice. The fourth and final release in this project, which comes in 2020, will, I hope, finally help raise Leopold Kozeluch's reputation to something approaching his true worth.

Once again we have a fine cover photo from a great palace of the Austrian Empire: the Upper Belvedere Palace in Vienna (photo credit: Ixuskmitl). Inside these buildings artists like Leopold Kozeluch were subtly undermining the old order with modish art that hid modern, sometimes even revolutionary, ideas.

This album will be released on December 13, 2019

São Paulo's Villa-Lobos recording revolution

Heitor Villa-Lobos: Guitar Concerto, Harmonica Concerto, Sexteto Místico, Quinteto Instrumental

In the past ten years we've been blessed with a new generation of Villa-Lobos recordings from São Paulo that have instantly become the new standards for interpretation, instrumental playing and engineering. These include the complete Bachianas Brasileiras, Choros and Symphonies series. Now we have a very welcome disc in Naxos's new series The Music of Brazil, which takes on the first of the composer's commissioned concertos from the last decade of his life, along with some important chamber works.

The Guitar Concerto, written for Andrès Segovia in 1951, is somewhat controversial. Jason Vieaux, speaking for the Defence, has expressed his love for the work. Meanwhile, John Williams said, "it just isn't a very good piece, technically or musically." This has always been a popular work, thanks to a plethora of great recordings, by Julian Bream, Göran Söllscher, and my own favourite, by Norbert Kraft. There's even a very convincing recording by John Williams himself! But I'll admit that, at least in its final movement, the Guitar Concerto, like much of the commissioned music from Villa's final decade, suffers from some undistinguished patches of banal passage-work, though in this case they connect some of the composer's finest tunes. Lovely tunes were never a problem for this guy! I've only listened to this new recording of the Concerto by Manuel Barrueco and OSESP (the São Paulo Symphony) under Giancarlo Guerrero, five or six times, but I'm already suspecting this will go to the very top of the list. Barrueco's playing is outstanding, especially in the Cadenza, and even in the Finale the partnership between soloist and orchestra makes the most compelling case for bringing this work out of the John Williams cold.

Eero Tarasti refers to Villa-Lobos's "limpid late period". The Harmonica Concerto, written for John Sebastian in 1955, partakes fully of the relaxed, late-night noodlings that are seemingly built-in to the instrument. Beginning with a theme that's disconcertingly similar to the Hancock's Half-Hour theme-song by Wally Stott/Angela Morley, Villa-Lobos continues his formula here: lots of arresting, sometimes quite beautiful, themes held together with characteristic runs and doodles by the solo instrument. In this case, as so often throughout his career, Villa-Lobos cottons on to a wider variety of effects from his instruments than are standard, providing a kaleidoscopic effect of instrumental orchestral colours. The playing here by José Staneck is very fine, though this recording lacks some of the energy of the classic album by Robert Bonfiglio and the New York Chamber Symphony under Gerard Schwarz.

As fine as these two works are, I was most interested in the two chamber works, by the OSESP Ensemble, made up of some very fine musicians indeed. The Sesteto Místico (aka Sextuor Mystique) was nominally written in 1917, though it was revised later in Villa's career. This is a fine example of Villa's modernist style, well ahead of anything being written in Latin America, and close to the leading edge in Europe. Tarasti refers to its "contrapuntal colorism... a refined, aquarelle-like texture simply because of the choice of instruments." He notes that "a corresponding combination is not to be found in European chamber music of the period." This is a very fine recording, with delicate filigree effects and all the colours of the rainbow.

We return to the 1950s with the Quinteto Instrumental, written in 1957. This is a work of pure nostalgia, though it's French nostalgie rather than the usual Brazilian saudade, with Villa-Lobos looking back to his time in Paris in the 1920s. The sounds of the instruments evoke Ravel, as does the mildly ironic and sentimental tone of the music. If there is a falling-off in Villa-Lobos's inspiration in the commissioned works of the 1950s, it's hard to hear it in the great chamber works of the period, including the late String Quartets and this Quintet. And it's a great work to end this very, very fine disc from São Paulo. I look forward to more in this series!





This disc will be released on November 8, 2019. This review also appears at The Villa-Lobos Magazine.

A classical backbone & a lushly romantic outlook

Agustin Barrios: Guitar Music, vol. 5

Naxos chose the young Turkish guitar virtuoso Celil Refik Kaya to complete their 5-CD Barrios Guitar Music series, and the first prize winner of the JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition in 2012 started strong with last year's release of Volume 4. The final disc is a triumph; this is really outstanding guitar playing. It's a tribute to both the composer and the soloist that the musical interest can be sustained at the end of a project that's this long; so often we have only left-over bits and pieces and a "let's get this done, finally" from everyone involved. Not here: Barrios has the twin virtues of a disciplined, classical backbone and a lushly romantic outlook; while Celil Refik Kaya brings a spontaneity to the more hackneyed salon pieces, and suitable gravitas for the more complex works. It must have been a huge advantage for the young guitarist to have the great production team of Norbert Kraft and Bonnie Silver in charge. One of the modern greats of the Spanish guitar, Norbert Kraft is also Engineer and Editor for the project. We hear so much about cut-throat competition at the high end of classical music; it's important to remember there is collegiality and mentorship at play every day as well.

Virtuosity and musicianship galore are on display in this superb release! Highly recommended.



By the way, I believe Norbert Kraft only recorded a single Barrios piece. It's the gorgeous Julia Florida, and it appears on his 1997 Naxos album Guitar Favourites.




This album will be released on March 8, 2019.

Music from the shadows

Alberto Nepomuceno: Symphony in G minor, Prelude to O Garatuja, Serie Brasileira

The Villa-Lobos Shadow in Brazilian classical music is wide, and long, and very dark. It reaches forward from the intimidating bulk of the great composer's works, but it also reaches into the past, obscuring the music of fine, or at least respectable, composers who went before. But now, to shine some light on composers in this shadow, we have an exciting new Naxos series called The Music of Brazil, made possible by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs project Brasil em Concerto. We can look forward to more releases from the Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP), from a label that has already done so much for Brazilian classical music.

Alberto Nepomuceno is a good composer to begin with: born twenty-three years before Villa-Lobos, he left behind his beginnings in the North-Eastern cities of Fortaleza and Recife for more sophisticated musical surroundings, first in Rio de Janeiro, and then for an extended stay in the European capitals of Rome, Berlin, Vienna and Paris. A progressive in politics as well as art, Nepomuceno worked tirelessly, often behind the scenes, on behalf of new trends in music, but it was Villa-Lobos who gained much of the credit as the foremost home-grown musical modernist. In a coup of self-promotion and clever branding, Villa-Lobos stood virtually alone as the representative of music at the Semana de Arte Moderna in São Paulo in 1922. At that point, unfortunately, Nepomuceno had been dead for nearly two years, though surely more room could be made in the story of avant garde Brazilian music for someone who had translated Schoenberg’s Theory of Harmony into Portuguese in 1916, teaching it at his National Institute of Music.

Which brings us to the music on the present disc. There is lots of well-crafted, pleasant music here, substantial enough to make careful listening worth your while, with occasionally something special.  While I was re-listening to Nepomuceno's G minor Symphony I had a flash-back to some music I had heard earlier in the day on my car radio (on KING-FM), Johan Halvorsen's Symphony no. 1 in D minor. Both had a pleasing, light, Tchaikovskian sound, and I wasn't at all surprised to see that both composers were born in the same year, 1864, though the Brazilian symphony was written in 1893, thirty years before its Norwegian counterpart. It's the beautiful slow movement of this symphony which represents perhaps the peak of Nepomuceno's orchestral music, under the influence, I would guess, of music by composers such as Puccini and Leoncavallo, but prefiguring works by Elgar and Richard Strauss.

Fabio Mechetti and the Minas Gerais Philharmonic provide really excellent playing, with especially strong string sections. Their version of the G minor Symphony is vastly better than the other version I've heard, by the Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira under Edoardo de Guarnieri from 1958. This is a strong start for the Naxos series, and I look forward to upcoming releases!

This disc will be released on February 8, 2019.

Appealing music from Brazil's modernist tradition

Images of Brazil: music for violin & piano by Guerra-Peixe, Guarnieri, Villa-Lobos, Aguiar, Freire and Villani-Cortes

We have here one of only a few major Heitor Villa-Lobos works that are still without a modern, easy to buy recording: O Martírio dos Insetos, written in 1917/1925 for violin and orchestra. It's true that this Naxos disc, due to be released on December 7, 2018, includes not the full violin and orchestra version, but an arrangement for violin and piano by Ricardo Averbach. But it's so well played by violinist Francesca Anderegg and pianist Erika Ribeiro, and it's such a marvellous piece, that I'd feel like a Grinch for complaining. The work is in Villa-Lobos's full-on modernist style, with the added bonus of Villa's gift for musically communicating his detailed knowledge of the natural world.

Though the rest of this program comes after Villa-Lobos's time, most is in Villa's particularly home-grown modernist style, a blend of advanced compositional and instrumental technique; the folklore of African and Brazilian Indian traditions; and the folk music (and salon music) of Europe, especially from the Iberian peninsula. A good example is the 4th Sonata for Violin & Piano by a leading composer of the generation following Villa-Lobos, Camargo Guarnieri. It's an energetic and passionate work which slides quite naturally into the vacant slot left with Villa's death in 1959. Much of the rest of the program is lighter, more melodic and romantic, and less erudite, but it's all very appealing, and beautifully played by Anderegg and Ribeiro. Highly recommended.

This disc will be released on December 7, 2018.

This review is also posted at The Villa-Lobos Magazine.

Dramatic, vital symphonies from a Czech master

Leopold Kozeluch: Symphonies, vol. 2

According to the fine essay by Allan Badley included in the liner notes of this new Naxos release, Leopold Kozeluch (1747–1818) left 16 surviving symphonies and two symphonies concertantes, so we're probably half-way through this series of discs from the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice under Marek Stilec. I very much enjoyed the first release in the series, back in early 2017, but the question is, will we bump up against the dreaded Law of Diminishing Returns?

On the evidence of this new album, I'm pleased to say that Kozeluch remains the same charming, inventive, solidly musical and tasteful (if I can use one of Mozart's favourite words) composer I judged him back then. The Bohemian composer comes up with a fabulous opening for his F major Symphony, cleverly chosen by Marek Stilec to go first in this program. This is dramatic and vital music that comes awfully close to the orchestral masterworks of Haydn and Mozart. Not every movement is at this level, and I thought at first that Kozeluch was running out of steam, and inspiration, in each symphony, but then I heard the marvellous Menuetto from the G major Symphony, which somehow perfectly represents in musical form an entire world that's conjured up by Ievgenii Tryfonov's photograph of the baroque Augustinian Wing of the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, on the front cover of the CD. Bring on more Kozeluch Symphonies, Naxos, and don't forget the Symphonies Concertantes!

Here's a nice bit of the opening movement of the G major Symphony in a Naxos video on YouTube:



This disc will be released on December 7, 2018.

In memoriam; In space

Wolfgang Rihm: Lichtzwang (In memoriam Paul Celan), Dritte Musik, Gedicht des Malers

DO NOT WORK AHEAD,
do not send out,
stand
inward:
transgrounded by the void,
free of all
prayer,
fine-fugued, according to
Writ’s pre-Script,
not overtakable,
I take you in,
instead of any
rest.

 - The final poem from Paul Celan's Lichtzwang ("Light-duress"), in Paul Joriss's translation, published in 1970

Wolfgang Rihm's Lichtzwang, written during the period 1975-76, is a memorial to the great poet Paul Celan, who drowned himself in the Seine in Paris on April 20, 1970. It's one of the great elegaic works for violin and orchestra, in the same class as Alban Berg's Violin Concerto of 1935, written "To the memory of an angel", Alma and Walter Gropius's daughter Manon, who died of polio at 18. It's encouraging to see a new, and extremely fine, recording of this work, by the young violinist Tanwa Yang, and the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz under Christoph-Mathias Mueller, an indication perhaps that this work is entering the core repertory as the Berg has. I know the most recent recording, also from SWRmusic, on a 2008 Hanssler Classic disc with Janos Yegnesy and the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg under Sylvain Cambreling. Both recordings are sterling.

This really is a most amazing piece, which begins with an angry clash of percussion, but spends most of its time in a yearning, unsettled space that sounds almost neo-Romantic at times. The violin plays mainly in a high register, while the orchestra attempts to pull it down, almost like the cold current of the Seine. One of the defining characteristics of the work is its use of silence; the action stops cold more than a few times, with complete silence before a reboot, almost like black-outs in the theatre. The final silence is shattering. Yang and Mueller have the measure of this music; I found it a profoundly moving performance.

Rihm's Dritte Musik, his third violin concerto, from 1993, also has its contemplative moments, but overall it has a wider range of emotions, and features the instruments of a very large orchestra as much as the solo instrument. Rihm's most recent violin concerto, from 2014, is his Gedicht des Malers (Poem of the Painter).  The painter is Max Beckmann, an important figure in Rihm's music; his earlier works include Versuchung (Hommage à Max Beckmann), from 2008-09, and Der Maler träumt, from the same period, set to Beckmann’s On my Painting. "Music", wrote Rihm, "is indeed maybe painting or architecture, in time, depending on one’s viewpoint. For me rather painting, but certainly in space, not restricted to one and the same surface." In Beckmann's 1921 painting Self Portrait as Clown, the painter holds a violin bow as a kind of analogue for the painter's brush, and it's this conceit that Rihm expounds on in this piece. It's all rather fanciful, but though this is a stereo rather than a surround-sound recording, I can easily imagine this performance taking place in a three-dimensional space, as Rihm says: "in space". What a wonderful album!

Max Beckmann, Self-portrait as a clown, 1921, Von-der-Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal

A mentorship bears fruit

Leonard Bernstein: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Suite; Slava!; CBS Music; A Bernstein Birthday Bouquet

Leonard Bernstein: Anniversaries; Fancy Free; Candide Overture; Wonderful Town Overture

These two discs are due to be released on October 5, 2018.

I was just catching my breath after the August 2018 Leonard Bernstein Centennial when two Naxos re-issues, both of them marvellous discs, showed up from Sao Paulo. These are from the Marin Alsop Leonard Bernstein Anniversary box set released by Naxos early in 2018. Alsop, who studied under Bernstein at Tanglewood, conducts her Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) in an exciting and (almost) timely mix of occasional pieces and more substantial works. Naxos provides their usual high production values: vivid sound and interesting and informative documentation.

Thirty years before last month's Centennial bash there was a big celebration at Tanglewood for Bernstein's 70th birthday. The Boston Symphony had commissioned some distinguished composers to write short tributes to Lenny. My favourite is this fun piece by Luciano Berio; it has a cute ending!


These two discs are full of such clever trifles, but there are more substantial works as well. The Candide Overture has become one the Bernstein's most popular works during the Centennial year, and Alsop and her Brazilian players deliver a superb version here. The Fancy Free Suite is full of Broadway moxie and sentimentality, and it translates well here with a very slight samba flair and saudade sadness.

Marin Alsop works with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood. Photo: Walter H. Scott, 1988. Boston Symphony Archives.

All of this music, and the entire Alsop Bernstein project, is really a story of the close relationship between a special mentor and a remarkably astute pupil. It's so exciting to see it bear fruit in these beautifully presented recordings of the Maestro's music.

Worth the wait for three premiere recordings

Paul Patterson: Violin Concerto no. 2; Kenneth Leighton: Violin Concerto; Gordon Jacob: Violin Concerto

Clare Howick brings her excellent technique and the big sound of the 'Maurin' Stradivarius 1718, on loan from the Royal Academy of Music, to 20th and 21st century music from Britain in this very welcome new disc from Naxos. Paul Patterson wrote his superb 2nd Violin Concerto for Howick in 2013, and this is its first recording. What's more surprising is that the other two works on the disc are receiving their premiere recordings as well. Gordon Jacob's Concerto for Violin & Strings, a work that I find extremely interesting and admire more each time I hear it, was written in 1953. I guess when one thinks back to the post-war New Music world it was out of step with its time, but nearly 65 years later it's fresh and alive. Howick's playing is completely convincing, in the frame conductor Grant Llewellyn sets up with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's expert playing, not allowing the rhapsodic passages to become sentimental and keeping things moving along smartly. Similarly, the Kenneth Leighton Concerto for Violin and Small Orchestra, written in the previous year, is well worth the wait. Its four short movements each pack a punch, with distinct and distinctive moods, and the whole thing adds up to a minor masterpiece. Again, the playing of soloist and orchestra is special: taught and bright and memorable. Very highly recommended!

This disc will be released on December 1, 2017.

Sounds of youth with echoes of maturity

Heitor Villa-Lobos: Symphonies 1 and 2

The Villa-Lobos Symphonies series from Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) under Isaac Karabtchevsky comes to a triumphant conclusion with this disc of the composer's first two symphonies. Though Villa-Lobos was a little bit of a late bloomer - his earliest works aren't especially accomplished by the standards set by Mendelssohn or Schubert - there's an interesting situation keeping this release from being anti-climactic. The 2nd Symphony, ostensibly written in the late teens of the 20th century, had to wait until 1944 for its premiere, and the composer seems to have used more than a bit of his best juju in polishing up this piece for its performance. It thus seems to be far in advance of the 1st symphony, and more importantly, the 3rd and even the 4th, as good as that work is. Though it's true that the 2nd Symphony is based on the principles of composition espoused by Vincent d'Indy and there are many French and Russian-sounding bits, one keeps hearing passages that sound like nothing as much as the Bachianas Brasilieras. And that's all to the good, I think.

By the way, there are a few other works from this period where something similar happened. Villa-Lobos wrote "1917" on the score of the marvellous orchestral work Uirapuru, but it wasn't premiered until 1935. Like the 2nd Symphony, it has a suspiciously nationalistic, Bachianas Brasileiras sound, which isn't surprising considering that the composer conducted the premiere in front of President Vargas. And the score of the Sexteto Mistico (one of my favourite chamber works), written in 1917, was lost. Villa-Lobos re-wrote it from memory, but obviously slipped in music in the modernist style he had mastered in Paris in the mid-1920s.

With his 1st Symphony Villa-Lobos was still learning to write music for orchestra, but it's still a more than creditable effort. It has a very fine performance here, partly because of the Sao Paulo musicians, who are very much in a groove with their conductor Isaac Karabtchevsky; and partly because of the carefully revised score which fixes many mistakes and excrescences, and in which Karabtchevsky himself played a major role. This performance makes an even better case for the symphony than the very good CPO recording from Stuttgart conducted by Carl St. Clair.

There are two last things to praise.  The Naxos design team has done a great job with this whole series. They've broken out of the bland Naxos cover tradition with striking black and white photographs. This last disc is one of the best; it features Beach at Nightfall, Rio de Janeiro, 1940, by Thomaz Farkas, the great Hungarian photographer who moved to Brazil as a child. Secondly, Fábio Zanon, who is currently Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, provides another absolutely first-class essay for the liner notes, with strong analysis and new insights. Put together, the Naxos Symphonies notes represent a major contribution to Villa-Lobos scholarship. This last disc in the set will be released on November 10, 2017

This review also appears at The Villa-Lobos Magazine.

Masterpieces revealed

Villa-Lobos Symphonies 8, 9 & 11

Villa-Lobos wrote twelve symphonies, though only eleven of the scores survive, and he wrote them from early in his career (1916) to very late (1957, two years before his death). People have been warning us for a long time not to value Villa-Lobos's symphonies too highly. I know this; I've been one of them. Don't expect too much, was the message, his best works are for the guitar and piano, and in the Choros and the Bachianas Brasileiras series. Now that we're well into the Naxos Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) series, led by Isaac Karabtchevsky, I'm beginning to think this particular piece of conventional wisdom might be wrong. These three symphonies sound familiar, sure, because they sound like Villa-Lobos. But even though I've heard all three a number of times, in the very good CPO series from Carl St. Clair and the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart made around the turn of the last century, the music on the new disc sounds fresh and new and really quite amazing.  This series is forcing all of us to sit up and take notice of a whole big chunk of Villa-Lobos's legendarily large output.

In his really excellent liner notes the guitarist and musicologist Fabio Zanon talks about how Villa's mature symphonies suffered because they were different from people's expectations and because of editorial problems with the scores. Though I hear the odd echo of the Choros from Villa's heyday in Paris in the 1920s, and plenty of call-outs to the Bachianas Brasileiras series of the 1930s and early 40s, the 8th, 9th and 11th Symphonies share something of a reboot feeling for the composer.  Here he finally turns his back, more or less, on modernism, while doing the same, more or less, with the folkloric music that made his worldwide reputation. There's a neo-classical (not neo-baroque) sound that goes along with early classical symphonic structures. Zanon sees and hears both Haydn and Mozart in this music, with Beethoven and Schubert lurking around the edges. Having stripped down his orchestral music to the essentials, we're now more aware than ever of how Villa-Lobos has constructed the music. To be sure this is still music written for large orchestras, but there's no Brazilian percussion component, no prepared pianos or violinophones, and no over-the-top Romantic gestures. The first movement of the 9th Symphony is instructive. Villa zips out three themes in quick succession, gives them a quick run-through in his contrapuntal-light machine, and then, when you expect a fair bit of noodling, he winds things up abruptly, with a typical Villa-Lobos flourish. All done in less than four and a half minutes. I must say that I like the concise Villa-Lobos; it makes a nice change from the often over-blown padding of more than a few of his works. This is vivid, direct, lively music without empty gesticulation. With the varnish of score errors and outdated preconceptions removed, these three symphonies emerge as masterpieces.

A copy of this review is at The Villa-Lobos Magazine. The disc drops on June 9, 2017.

Happy Centennial, Lou!

Lou Harrison: Violin concerto, Grand duo, Double music (with John Cage)

This disc (and this review) is well-timed. Today we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Lou Harrison's birth. There seems to be at least some small interest out there in what should be a major event, though I would have hoped for a bit more hype for one of my favourite American composers. In any case this splendid new disc from Naxos is a suitable marker for Lou's Centennial.

I recently came across this picture of the Surrealists in Paris:

Man Ray, Hans Arp, Yves Tanguy, Andre Breton, Tristan Tzara, Salvador Dali, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Rene Crevel 

There's so much genius here, Man Ray's versatility and Ernst's audacity, Dali's schtick and Breton's vision, all in one place and pretty much all from the same generation. You'd need to do a fair bit of Photoshopping to come up with a similar shot of America's great crop of modernist composers, partly because there's a wider range of ages, with Copland, Cowell, Bowles, Virgil Thompson and Gershwin born around the turn of the century; Barber, Cage, Schuman and Carter in the next decade, and the babies Lou Harrison & Leonard Bernstein (whose Centennial is next summer) ten years later. There's a much broader geographic range as well, from the West Coast (Harrison was born in Portland OR) to New York (where he worked for The New York Herald Tribune as a music critic) to Paris (where he did not go to study, unlike so many of his colleagues).

Harrison's own genius is pretty clear, nurtured by his mentor Henry Cowell, his teacher at UCLA Arnold Schoenberg, and later in New York, that great well-spring of American modernism Charles Ives. The Concerto for Violin and Percussion is a great introduction to Harrison's music, with its kitchen-sink "junk" percussion and surprisingly full-bodied emotion from the solo violin. Harrison acknowledged the influence of Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, about which he said "It really walloped me." The soloist Tim Fain plays with the required virtuosity as well as the sensitivity and musicality to scale the heights and plumb the depths of this remarkable work, one of the great American concertos, matched in Harrison's works by his Piano Concerto. Angel Gil-Ordonez's PostClassical Ensemble provide robust support, with an equal virtuosity on the percussion side. Fain is joined by pianist Michael Boriskin in Harrison's Grand Duo, which treats the piano very much in a percussive role, though considering how important percussion is to Harrison it's more a question of opening up new options for the pianist rather than limiting them.

The short but not slight Double Music makes a special impression in its seven minutes. It's the result of an intriguing collaboration with John Cage. Each composer provided music for two of the four players, based on a kind of temporal template, and the resulting work came together seamlessly. Chance, so important in Cage's music, had played its role perfectly. This piece nicely sums up mid-century American music: fresh and alive with many influences from around the world and from many time periods, as fun to listen to as I'm sure it is to play.

More fine Dvorak from Wit, from Navarre

Dvorak Mass in D; Te Deum

I'm a big fan of the conductor Antoni Wit. His Naxos discography is extensive, and a string of awards has people paying more attention to his new releases. The discs I've enjoyed the most have been with the excellent Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, including a very fine 2015 Dvorak Requiem. Wit is also (since 2013-14) the Artistic Director of the Orquesta Sinfonica de Navarra, and this I believe is his first recording with this orchestra.  The Mass in D and the Te Deum are both very appealing works from a choral composer of the first order. Though both are smaller in scope, they reach the same peaks of pathos, awe and consolation as Dvorak's Requiem. The lovely swinging opening Kyrie of the Mass is sung and played by Wit's Spanish musicians with the utmost delicacy, though Wit teases out the backbone as well. Dvorak's Brahms and Beethoven models are perhaps more forward than they might be with a Eastern European orchestra. The choral singing from the Orfeon Pamplones is superb, and all four soloists are strong, with soprano Ewa Biegas a stand-out.

This disc is due for release on May 12, 2017.

Self-recommending Hindemith

Back in the old days I used to read the reviews in Gramophone magazine, to get some guidance about which LPs I should buy with my meagre budget. A reviewer would often recommend a disc, and sometimes highly recommend one. Very occasionally he (it was pretty much always a he then) would use the phrase "self-recommending", which I took to mean that you should go out right away and purchase that disc. An obvious transaction, a done deal. That's the case here. These three CDs of Paul Hindemith's seven string quartets have all been previously released, from recordings made in 2011 and 2015, but it's so convenient to have them collected in one set, and at a discount to boot. The music is outstanding; Hindemith's string quartet series is as varied and interesting as those by Villa-Lobos and Grażyna Bacewicz, and just as under-rated. The playing of the young Amar Quartet is really amazing; for me it was revelatory. They bring a warmth and humanity to this music that I didn't realize was there before. This is besides the technical merit of their playing and the precision with which they render Hindemith's more involved and academic passages. The recording is by Swiss Radio, and it matches both the precision of the musicians and their warmth.

The Amar Quartet is named after the original group in which Hindemith himself played the viola. Here is the first movement of Quartet no. 4, op. 22, by the young Amars:

And by their forebears: