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.

Popular and modernist songs from Brazil

I somehow missed this superb CD of Brazilian songs by Cristiane Roncaglio when it was released a couple of years ago. It includes outstanding interpretations of some of Tom Jobim's best songs, and a fine version of Ary Barrosso's sui generis Aquarela do Brasil. On the Villa-Lobos side, it's nice to hear three songs from Villa's late work Floresta do Amazonas. Veleiro, Cair de Tarde and especially Cancao do Amor are so popular in Brazil, but aren't heard here as often as they should be. But it's three songs from around 1920 that really stand out for me. Solidão (Solitude) and Novelozinho de linha, from the song collection Historietas, and Epigramma, from the collection Epigrammas Ironicas E Sentimentais, are completely in the modernist style of Satie, Debussy and Ravel, though they were all written before Villa's first trip to Paris later that decade. Villa-Lobos felt strongly enough about Solidão to include it in the program for 1922's famous Semana de Arte Moderna in Sao Paulo, the showcase for avant garde Brazilian art that focussed, on the music side, almost exclusively on Villa-Lobos. The shocked response from the audience, so similar to the near riots modernist composers were encountering in Europe, must have demonstrated to Villa-Lobos that he was on the right track!

Songs by Waldemar Henrique, Baden Powell, Miranda, Santoro and Belchior round out a fabulous collection with plenty of variety in style, rhythm and texture (with excellent guitar and piano accompaniment by Andre Bayer and Cristian Peix). Cristiane Roncaglio's very strong voice fits both the popular and more erudite music perfectly; there's no "slumming" here, or awkwardness, as there sometime is when the operatic voice leaves the formal stage in favour of the smoke-filled nightclub. To be fair, it's easier to do this in Brazilian music, where the lines between the two styles are so blurred. In this album Cristiane Roncaglio and her colleagues hit the mark perfectly everytime.

A century of great chamber music from Brazil

From September 2, 2009:

Heitor Villa-Lobos looms large in Brazil, and not just in the classical music world. In Brazilian popular music, jazz, and popular culture, and especially in this Ano Villa-Lobos (the 50th anniversary of his death), Villa-Lobos is everywhere. This makes it hard for the composers of Villa's generation, and those who followed him, to get noticed. This disc is a welcome introduction to some names that might not be well known to music lovers. Perhaps the new interest in Villa-Lobos in Brazil and around the world will be the tide that raises all boats.

The one fairly well-known work in this chronologically organized CD is Villa-Lobos's Quinteto em forma de Choros, written in 1928. It's a masterpiece, closely related to the Choros series that many (including myself) believe constitutes Villa's greatest achievement.

Luciano Gallet's Turuna for Clarinet, Violin, Viola, & Percussion is from 1926, and it's a real find. The work reflects Gallet's expertise in Brazilian folklore and popular music. It has the same fresh sound of the urban serenaders known as Choroes that permeates Villa-Lobos's music of the 1920s. The music really swings. But the Turuna shares with the Quinteto and the following work, Camargo Guarnieri's Two Songs for Flute and Voice, a sophisticated, modernist voice that relates to Villa-Lobos's strongest influences: Stravinsky, Debussy, and the many composers Villa met in Paris. You can hear in both the Gallet and Guarnieri, for example, the flute and clarinet sounds of Choros #02 of 1924. These works show that the international modernist style of Paris had found fertile ground in Brazil.

Francisco Mignone, who worked in both the nationalist and modernist styles and even flirted with serialism in the 1950s, wrote the Five Songs for Voice & Bassoon relatively late in a very long and productive career. The songs look back to the 1920s, and earlier, to the salon music of the late nineteenth century. There are few composers who write better for the bassoon - bassoonists should take up these songs in the same way they have adopted the witty Waltzes for Solo Bassoon.

Claudio Santoro's Mini Concerto Grosso is a gorgeous piece. It's a stylized work that looks back on neo-classicism in the same way that neo-classicism looked back on earlier music. It looks back to the new Brazilian style that Villa-Lobos took up in the 1930s. Santoro, like Mignone, had gone through a variety of styles (he shared a teacher, Hans Joachim Koellreutter, with Antonio Carlos Jobim, and also studied with Nadia Boulanger). Ronaldo Miranda's Variations also look back to an earlier period in Brazilian music: to a much-loved song by Anacleto de Medeiros, whose choros and schottisches from the turn of the century had a major influence on Brazilian popular music and art music alike.

Joao Guilherme Ripper was born in the year that Villa-Lobos died, and his star has risen very high in the last few years, with major triumphs in choral music and opera. Matinas, from 1996, is another strong work to close this enjoyable and illuminating programme from the very capable musicians of the Deutschen Oper Berlin.