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.

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

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).

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.