The short individual pieces on this recording, the Valsas, Improvisos and Momentos show the sweeter side of Guarnieri's musical language. The Waltz is a format in which every Brazilian composer has expressed his national character, making it almost a new distinctive format. Guarnieri's Valsas share a minor key, and typically present internal melodies shared between the hands, and wreathed in chromatic modulations and decorations. Their mood is one of longing, now almost completely shorn of it's dance character. The effect of all these pieces, many of them extreme miniatures, is of gentle nostalgia. � Adrian Farmer

Classical Music

Guarnieri is the most impressive Brazilian composer who thrived in the wake of Villa-Lobos. Canção sertaneja is a genuine gem from a composer whose lush and lively corpus of works needs much more exposure on disc.

Probably the most impressive composer who thrived in the wake of Villa-Lobos's single-handed inception of Brazilian musical nationalism would have to be Camargo Guarnieri (1907-93). In fact, compared to the well-deserved attention that the recording industry (Marco Polo in particular) has recently lavished on his predecessor and mentor, it seems that the force and vitality of Guarnieri's accomplishments have been somewhat slighted.

Although Guarnieri's mature idiom is unmistakably indebted to the indigenous melos pioneered by Villa-Lobos (who was about 20 years his senior), Guarnieri, rather than turning toward the Gallic traditions—both post-Franckian and Impressionist—that fortified Villa-Lobos, imbibed from the very beginning the stirrings of Neoclassicism during the 1920s and emerged almost fully formed as an exponent of a vigorously well-mortared, cosmopolitan language with strong Latin American inflections.

While the core of Guarnieri's output remains his extensive orchestral catalog (there are at least four symphonies and as many piano concertos as well as numerous other concerted works plus assorted overtures, suites, and programmatic pieces), his series of violin sonatas—written over more than four decades—are highly regarded. This companion volume to Marco Polo's earlier release of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Sonatas offers the remaining three (the first having been lost) in the cycle. Both the Second and the Third Sonatas were recorded on LP and have probably been the most frequently performed.

The earliest dates from 1933 and clearly indicates that Guarnieri's dramatic style, whose traditional formal inclinations were already well established even before his belated studies in Paris with Koechlin and his important contacts there with Milhaud and Boulanger during the years just before the outbreak of World War II. All the sonatas are conceived in three fast-slow-fast movements (the triptych was Guarnieri's favorite format) of some 15 to 20 minutes in duration. The ideas are clearly and forcefully articulated and their development, though sometimes partaking of the rhapsodic mode, is always tightly constructed, while the overall form is quite compellingly logical and symmetrical. But this music is hardly dry and formulaic—it is full of rhythmic élan and an expressive lyricism, as some representative tempo designations (Sem pressa ben ritmado; Profundamente terno; and Impetuoso) would indicate. This is most listenable music, and it is given a firm send-off and advocacy by the well-attuned team of Larsen and Müllenbach.

During the 1970s Guarnieri, like some other elder Brazilians such as Mignoné, lost faith in the validity of his nationalist manner and dabbled in more "experimental" efforts. The Seventh Sonata of 1977, although still imbued with the same temperament as the earlier works, is completely lacking in their charm and appeal because the harshly impersonal, almost atonal language has absolutely no Brazilian resonance and seems highly inimical to Guarnieri's peculiar strengths.

The program closes with a ravishingly melancholy Canção sertaneja (Song of the Backwoodsman), marked Dolentemente in Guarnieri's best and most engaging "upcountry" manner—a genuine gem from a composer whose lush and lively corpus of works needs much more exposure on disc. Let's hope Marco Polo has plans afoot!

-- Paul A. Snook, FANFARE [1/1998]

Classical Music

Classical Music

Considered the most important Brazilian composer next to Villa-Lobos, Camargo Guarnieri had an inestimable impact on the musical life of his country, with a body of piano music that represents the composer’s most distinctive stylistic features. Guarnieri was a consummate improviser and many of his piano works reflect a sense of ease and intimacy, giving the impression that they were composed in a flash of instantaneous inspiration. This is particularly true of the ‘character pieces’ in this volume, from the autobiographical Improvisos and Momentos, to the intimate nostalgia of the Valsas. Volume 1 of this edition can be heard on Naxos 8.572626-27.

Mozart Camargo Guarnieri is universally recognised as the most important Brazilian composer after Villa-Lobos. The Six Piano Concertos, composed over a period of forty years, offer a complete panorama of Guarnieri’s stylistic evolution, in particular his blend of sophisticated compositional techniques and the improvisational character of Brazilian folk-music. The Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5 display a number of avant-garde features that are fundamentally different from the more nationalistic vocabulary that informs the earlier three piano concertos (Naxos 8.557666). Completed shortly after the composer’s eightieth birthday, the chamber-like, intimate Piano Concerto No. 6 returns to an earlier style.

We can only hope that this disc signals the beginning of a complete cycle of the six piano concertos of Camargo Guarnieri, for these are wonderful works in the ethnic/modern/neoclassical tradition of, say, Bartók, although the melodic idiom naturally recalls Villa-Lobos, but with form. In this respect, Guarnieri really was the better composer: compared to the piano concertos of his more illustrious compatriot you will find here a real give-and-take between soloist and orchestra, with characterful thematic material cogently presented and tautly developed. Best of all is the Concerto No. 2, which very well could become quite popular, though No. 1 is the most idiomatically folk-like, while No. 3 is a touch more spiky.


The performances are excellent. Max Barros addresses the sometimes brilliant and always idiomatic solo parts with enthusiasm and a sure sense of where the music wants to go, and he always finds the lyricism in Guarnieri's pungent melodies. All three slow movements are quite beautiful. Thomas Conlin offers able support and gets very respectable results from the Warsaw Philharmonic, and it's to their credit that they never sound uncomfortable with what must be a very unfamiliar idiom. Sonically this production could do with a touch more clarity and dryness, though balances are well-judged and the piano is effectively represented. Now that the symphonies are also available (from BIS), Guarnieri's achievement is at last coming into focus, and it's very impressive indeed.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Mozart Camargo Guarnieri was the most important Brazilian composer next to Villa-Lobos. Guarnieri’s piano music embodies his most distinctive stylistic features. One of his most beloved works, the Dança Negra shares folk-music inspiration with the Suite Mirim. The Ponteios are characterized by an enormous variety of Brazilian music styles and moods, and the Sonata can be seen as a summary of Guarnieri’s musical personality. Max Barros’s “unfaltering brio and a complete command of the idiom” (Gramophone) can also be heard in Guarnieri’s Piano Concertos (8.557666 and 8.557667).

In his Choros, Guarnieri wrote music that conjures up the landscape and essence of Brazil. These very personal concertos reveal the composer’s refined instrumental combinations and elegant contrapuntal writing, while their dance rhythms are vivacious, drawing on the baião, maracatu and embolada. The Chorosin this second volume represent all stages of Guarnieri’s compositional development. Also included is the delightful and inventive Florde Tremembé, an early work with choro-like features. The first volume is also available on Naxos.

REVIEW:

This release, the second of two, contains Guarnieri’s Choros for clarinet (1956), piano (1956), cello (1961) and viola (1975). All four abound in high-spirited dancelike passages with syncopated Latin rhythms, alternating with music of pastoral lyricism, and usually end in a celebratory, carnival atmosphere. 

The later pair, for strings, are slightly more modernist: the composer even employs a 12-tone row in the viola concerto, but his lightness of touch and Brazilian exuberance are not affected (Guarnieri hated 12-tone music and penned articles about how unnatural he found it – then wrote some to prove he could!) The program also contains an early work for chamber orchestra, Flor de Tremembé (1937), which is jazzy with echoes of Gershwin.

This disc is even more fun than Volume 1. The musicians are absolutely at home with Guarnieri’s idiom: Roberto Tibiriçá’s tempos are spot on, the soloists are terrific, the sound first rate. This Choros for Clarinet should be as popular as the Clarinet Concerto by Copland (who, incidentally, was the composer’s friend and benefactor in the US).

--Limelight (Phillip Scott)

Camargo Guarnieri’s catalogue of works represents a legacy of incalculable worth for Brazilian culture, as has his influence as a teacher on several generations of younger composers. His association with the poet and musicologist Mario de Andrade led to the birth of the Brazilian Nationalist School and the ideals of using traditional Brazilian music in classical forms. The series of seven Choros and the Seresta for Piano and Orchestra represent Guarnieri’s personal approach to the concerto form, with striking contrasts between potent rhythm and dense, emotionally charged soundscapes and melodies full of Brazilian inspiration. This volume forms part of the first complete recording of the Choros.

Artistic director and conductor of the Orquestra Petrobras Sinfonica, Isaac Karabtchevsky is also artistic director of the Baccarelli Institute and the Heliopolis Symphony Orchestra. He was awarded the Premio da Musica Brasileira four times for his recordings of the complete symphonies of Villa-Lobos with the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra on Naxos. He has served as the musical director of the Teatro La Fenice, the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and the Tonkunstler Orchestra.

REVIEW:

Each of the four short works on this disc proves to be thoroughly entertaining. Rhythmically they bounce along in the allegros, often driven by Brazilian syncopation, while the slow movements are heartfelt and tender without being over-Romanticized. The performances are excellent. The soloists are members of the São Paulo orchestra—Davi Graton is also a renowned teacher—and Isaac Karabtchevsky boasts a long pedigree in conducting Brazilian music. (He led the same orchestra in Naxos’s first-rate series of the complete Villa-Lobos symphonies.) This initiative to record lesser-known Brazilian repertoire got off to a great start, and the new disc promises even more.

-- Fanfare