I would agree that the Homenaje to the murdered poet Lorca was one of [Revueltas'] most significant achievements—a long trumpet-led lament curiously interspersed with vivid dance-like episodes ''like El Salon Mexico on mescal'', as Page remarks about the last of the enjoyably pungent (but also lyrical) Alcancias (perhaps ''expansive bullets'' though, bewilderingly enough, it can also mean ''piggy-banks'' or ''brothel keepers''!). These latter pieces are brilliantly played by the London Sinfonietta, which then sobers up for the austere Planos, which the composer described as ''functional architecture''. Ocho x rondo is a scherzo (with a gentler central section) for octet, perhaps more immediately striking is a Toccata from the same year (1933), which demands (and gets) virtuoso playing from a chamber group. Revueltas's best-known work, the snake-killing ritual Sensemaya, is taken by Mata at the same deliberate pace he adopted with the Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela (Dorian, 11/93) but sounds more decorous at the hands of the New Philharmonia.

There is, however, nothing sedate, except, very properly, in the evocative and beautiful third movement (''Night in Yucatan''), about the performance by the Jalapa (or Xalapa) Symphony under Fuente (whose Sensemaya for Pickwick was reviewed in 12/93) of the four-movement suite drawn from the music for the film La noche de los Mayas: its finale, with an orgy of manic percussion and brass would almost rouse the dead (which presumably was the scene it accompanied). A fascinating disc.

-- Lionel Salter, Gramophone [2/1995]