The Music of Brazil

Restless and dynamic by nature, Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez was a key figure in the cultural life of Rio de Janeiro, founding numerous influential musical institutions both journalistic and educational. He gained international fame for the primordial power of Batuque, the final dance movement of his Afro-Brazilian influenced Reisado do Pastoreio suite. Without ever abandoning his Brazilian roots, in his later career Lorenzo Fernandez moved away from explicit nationalism towards a more universalist idiom as can be heard in the vigorously themed and atmospheric First Symphony of 1945 and the programmatic Second Symphony, inspired by the life and death of the heroic 17th-century explorer Fernão Dias Paes Leme.

Carlos Gomes was not only Brazil’s leading operatic composer, but he also helped pave the way for Italian verismo during the latter part of the 19th century. The preludes and overtures from his operas chart a course from early experimentation with orchestral sonority to a new conception of atmosphere and tension in his historically based dramas. In Alvorada (‘Dawn’) from Lo schiavo his descriptive writing comes close to the status of a symphonic poem. The music from his greatest artistic triumph, Il Guarany, weaves themes into an organic whole, while his final opera, Condor, is reminiscent of French orchestral music in its employment of whole-tone scales.

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César Guerra-Peixe was one of the most versatile Brazilian musicians of the 20th century, gaining a particular mastery of orchestration and creating his own inimitable sound through extensive work in radio, television and cinema. The toe-tapping dance rhythms and lyrical expressiveness in his two Symphonic Suites were inspired by research into Brazilian folk traditions, further enhanced by a broad range of vibrantly eloquent global influences. The lighthearted Roda de Amigos mischievously caricatures Guerra-Peixe’s musical circle of friends and their various woodwind instruments.

César Guerra-Peixe is one of the leading composers associated with musical nationalism in Brazil. A Retirada da Laguna is a programmatic suite that describes one of the most dramatic moments in the Paraguayan War of 1864–70, while his Concertino is a clever hybrid between folk music timbres and sophisticated high art ambitions. Museu da Inconfidência is one of the composer’s most admired works, taking us through a museum of 18th-century rebellion and heroism. Guerra-Peixe’s Symphonic Suites Nos. 1 and 2 can be heard on Naxos 8.573925, acclaimed by ClassicsToday.com as ‘absolutely world-class’.

César Guerra-Peixe’s compact First Symphony and the colourful Nonet date from his years as part of the Música Viva group – a collective of young composers influenced by Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, the German composer and teacher who brought serial techniques to Brazil. Guerra-Peixe’s relationship with serial composition was intense and short-lived, but both of these earlier pieces were admired internationally and remain two of the finest works produced by this movement. From the 1950s onwards, Guerra-Peixe turned to musical nationalism with many successes including his award-winning and eloquently programmatic Second Symphony.

Edino Krieger was a leading figure in Brazilian music as both composer and arts director who influenced a generation of his compatriots during his long life. Krieger’s works can be divided into three phases: serial, neo-Classical, and a fascinating synthesis of traditionalism and the avant-garde. From the second category comes the transitional Variações Elementares whereas his final creative phase, his peak of artistic maturity, is represented by the remainder of the programme. Included is one of his most emblematic pieces, Canticum Naturale, an expansive Amazonian painting in sound, and the virtuosic and expressive Ludus Symphonicus.

Ronaldo Miranda is a multi-award-winning Brazilian composer with works commissioned by leading artists and institutions. His music is regularly performed in prestigious venues in Brazil and around the world. Miranda’s Piano Concerto is an exciting virtuoso blend of atonality alongside hints of Bartók, contrasting with the flowing scales and delicate patterns found in the Concertino. The prize-winning Horizontes is a symphonic poem that tells the story of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World, while Variações Temporais (Beethoven Revisitado) is an inventive set of variations on some of Beethoven’s most famous motifs and themes.

Alberto Nepomuceno was a herald of Brazilian musical nationalism. He was one of the first composers in his country to employ elements of folklore in his compositions, he encouraged younger composers such as Villa-Lobos, and his music was conducted by Richard Strauss. The Prelude to O Garatuja, an incomplete opera, is one of his best-known works and an example of a truly Brazilian lyric comedy. Série Brasileira is a vivacious suite that employs maxixe rhythms and ends with the feverish batuque dance, while the Symphony in G minor is one of the earliest such examples by a Brazilian, a heroic and lyric structure revealing the influence of Brahms.

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Henrique Oswald was perhaps the most European of Brazilian composers, having spent a large part of his life in Italy; he also absorbed influences from France and Germany. Oswald’s music always retains a lyrical character with qualities of elegance and radiance, which can be heard in the Sinfonietta. The expressive Elegia, originally conceived for cello and piano, is dedicated to the memory of a friend. With its contrasts between darkness and light, coupled with undeniable beauty, the Symphony is regarded as Oswald’s finest orchestral achievement and one of the most significant works in the Brazilian orchestral literature.

The fourth volume in this series explores a pivotal decade in Claudio Santoro’s compositions. In the 1950s he moved from serialism towards nationalism starting with the transitional, reflective Canto de Amor e Paz (‘Song of Love and Peace’) and continuing with Symphony No. 4 which proved to be one of his most accessible and influential works. His Symphony No. 6 of 1958 is short but original, luminous and sombre by turns. The concertante works for saxophone and violin show Santoro’s command of dance rhythms, colourful lyricism and virtuosity.

Claudio Santoro was one of Brazil’s most eminent and influential composers. Over a 50-year period, he wrote a cycle of 14 symphonies that is widely acclaimed as the most significant cycle of its kind ever written in Brazil. The two selected works in this inaugural volume of the first complete recording of his symphonies focus on the 1950s, a period when Santoro sought a more direct and communicative idiom using Brazilian elements. His use of folk-based material is nonetheless highly creative, sometimes indeed abstract, as in key moments of Symphony No. 5. Symphony No. 7 is one of his most complex and intense works, a celebration of his country’s new capital Brasília in music of striking modernity.

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The 1960s proved to be a significant decade in Claudio Santoro’s ever-eventful life. The charged atmosphere of the Cello Concerto can be attributed to his experiences in East Berlin at the moment construction started on the Berlin Wall. Despite its challenging solo writing, the concerto is the most symphonically proportioned of all his concertante works. Exceptionally for Santoro, the dramatic Eighth Symphony combines serial techniques with an openly Expressionist idiom. Três Abstrações explores timbres and dynamic contrasts with string orchestra, while Interações Assintóticas is Santoro’s only work to use quarter-tone tuning for some remarkable effects.

Claudio Santoro’s prolific output includes a cycle of 14 symphonies that is widely recognised as the most significant of its kind from Brazil. All of the works in this programme come from Santoro’s remarkable final decade, in which he allied more traditional and eclectic styles to his earlier experiments. Both the Concerto Grosso and the Three Fragments on BACH were written for student orchestras, but are nonetheless substantial pieces which show his command of writing for strings. The Eleventh Symphony is one of the densest and most dramatic of the cycle, its finale exploding into an evocation of the opening of Brahms’ First Symphony, while the Twelfth Symphony is an unusual ‘sinfonia concertante’ for nine soloists and orchestra.

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Claudio Santoro’s late works are marked by great concision and considerable emotional density. The music on this album was written in the last months of his life. The Viola Concerto and the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra juxtapose restless energy and expansive – if at times desolate – lyricism. The powerful Symphony No. 13 shows Santoro’s mastery of orchestration and form at its peak, and the compact Symphony No. 14 was to be the last in a cycle widely acclaimed as the most significant of its kind ever composed in Brazil.