RODRIGO: FANTASIA PARA UN GENT

We are facing the first recording of complete Guitar Sonatas of Leo Brouwer, the most important guitar music composer of the modern era. In his music in general and in his Sonatas for Guitar in particular, tradition is intermingled with the latest stylistic and intellectual tendencies and is not limited only to what is erroneously called “refined music”. The different cultures -from the most tribal to the most elitist ones-, political-social phenomena, religions, the arts in any of their manifestations as well as the same human thought and feeling inspire and feed the Master’s sound world. Consequently, the challenge of recording his Sonatas for Guitar was not so much in the quantity or difficulty of his music, but in trying to show that Ethos originating from his music. From the first sonata to the last one, one can appreciate the multitude of ideas coming from his privileged knowledge as a composer and orchestra conductor of the great repertoire and its most hidden ins and outs. It is sometimes evident when he quotes Spanish Renaissance vihuelists such as Mudarra or Milan, but also masters of the stature of Pasquini, Beethoven or Shostakovich. Some other times he lets us glimpse details of the French harpsichord school of the 17th century, sonorities by Scriabin, Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Albéniz, or textures by Stravinsky, Bartok, minimalism, popular music and jazz. Similarly, like the vast majority of great composers, he quotes himself using written material for other instruments or instrumental groups, such as the piano, the flute, the orchestra or the guitar. Any element present in his pieces has an organic importance, which gives meaning to the whole ensemble. The golden ratio often appears in his structures, shaping the sound material in groups of measures based on the Fibonacci series as well as on the use of fractals.

Ausias Parejo won the 2022 'Alhambra' International Guitar Competition at the age of 17. In this programme he includes works by Leo Brouwer, Ponce and Guastavino, as well as works by Juan Erena, Lorenzo Palomo (a premiere recording) and Ausias's father Ruben.

•This programme of world première recordings of recent chamber music reveals some of Margaret Brouwer's most personal musical statements to date.

Classical Music

After the success of the First Barrios Guitar Competition CD (Elise Neumann, BC9287), this second issue by the 2012 winner Emanuele Buono establishes the extremely high level of this competition. This CD features Studies and Preludes by Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, one of the best-known and appealing guitar composers of the 20th century.

The novel Lux Nova Duo is already releasing its third CD with GENUIN. Lydia Schmidl, accordion, and Jorge Paz Verastegui, guitar, are joined this time by the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Eddie Mora and the soprano Marcia Lemke-Kern. The track list offers an exciting program comprised exclusively of world premiere recordings – all dedicated to the Duo Lux Nova, including works by guitar alto master Leo Brouwer as well as Sascha Lino Lemke, Eddie Mora, and Hector Docx. The CD's color palette is vast, ranging from Brouwer's Latin American colors to Mora's eclectic take on György Ligeti and Lemke's variations on the human breath to Hector Docx's "Transfigurations", which plumbs the depths of silence.

“Blue stands for a particularly intimate mood,” says renowned Spanish guitarist Pablo Sainz-Villegas. And correspondingly his latest album is titled The Blue Album, which will be released by Sony Classical on 9 June 2023. “Blue symbolizes a mysterious intermediary realm: one thinks of the moment when the sun rises and night slowly withdraws,” Pablo Sainz-Villegas goes on to explain. These are exceptional moments, moments between silence and waking, between heaven and earth, between light and darkness. These are also the moments that spirit us away from the hectic routine of our everyday lives and that create an atmosphere of reverie and relaxation, allowing us time to slow down. All of this is reflected in Pablo Sainz-Villegas’s new programme. Few composers have captured this mood so unmistakably in their music as the French composer Erik Satie, who is represented here by selections from his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. Debussy’s “Clair de lune” and “La fille aux cheveux de lin” are almost magical in their expressiveness: this is music that is filled with calm and with the power to enchant.

According to Pablo Sainz-Villegas, “this album brings together some of the most beautiful and most heartfelt melodies that have ever been written. All these pieces create a magical atmosphere, their colours create a mood, a mystery. The guitar whispers an invitation to the listener to explore and go to the most intimate part of your soul. It creates a moment to look inside and have a conversation with the essence of yourself. “ The repertory is correspondingly wide-ranging, extending, as it does, from the German and Italian Baroque – with music by Silvius Leopold Weiss and Domenico Scarlatti – to the present day with music by Philip Glass and Max Richter’s A Catalogue of Afternoons – which, as first single, is out today. Sainz-Villegas also undertakes a foray into the world of film music with the Cavatina from the classic film The Deer Hunter of 1978. And this release inevitably includes the international hit La Paloma, one of the most frequently performed and arranged pieces of the last 150 years. This Spanish work has come to embody the quintessential notion of longing.

On its new GENUIN album, the Lux Nova Duo takes up the cause of composer Leo Brouwer. The Cuban old master is well known to guitarists and lovers of guitar music but deserves more attention for his gripping, pulsating and multifaceted music! In the unusual line-up with Lydia Schmidl on accordion and Jorge Paz Verastegui on guitar, the Lux Nova Duo presents smaller and more extensive works by Brouwer, such as his Souvenir de Liège, the expansive Triptico concertante or the centuries-spanning Folía a través de los siglos. Through the subtle playing of the Lux Nova Duo, we discover Brouwer's stylistic range, which extends from folkloristic impressions to new, advanced musical language.

Devine confirms through this disc his position as one of the most accomplished guitarists now before the public

Havana-born Brouwer has claims to be one of the foremost present-day composers for the classical guitar. He wrote his first mature composition when he was sixteen, the neo-classical Suite Antigua, which is included here alongside some of his more recent compositions. This is the fourth volume in the Naxos Brouwer series, which started ten years ago. As with volume three the guitarist is Graham Anthony Devine, a player I have admired on several occasions. With his fluent technique and musical phrasing he is an ideal interpreter of Brouwer’s music. I haven’t heard the previous volumes but am quite familiar with his works. For someone coming new to him I would rather recommend one of the earlier volumes as a starter; possibly Volume 2 with the evocative El Decameron Negro, which I count as his finest work. The present volume has a great deal to offer, too, and the little suite from 1955 is charming.

When we turn to his more recent efforts we recognize the ‘real’ Brouwer. Much of his work is permeated with a kind of harsh lyricism, which can seem like a contradiction in terms. He often creates melodies, or themes, with great immediacy but spiced with dissonances to avoid any sweetness.

La ciudad de las columnas (The City of Columns) is a nickname for Havana. The six movement composition is a portrait of his native city and it shows how much he loves the place, even the busy and chaotic life of Obispo Street (IV).

As early as 1959 Brouwer began writing Estudios sencillos (Simple Studies) for pedagogical purposes. He composed several sets that have become very popular, also as concert music. In 2001 he wrote another set of ten pieces, each of them dedicated to a 20th century composer. Here we find omaggios a: Debussy, Mangoré, Caturia, Prokofiev, Tarrega, Sor, Piazzolla, Villa-Lobos, Szymanowski and Stravinsky. As can be seen this list includes several Latin-Americans, who have championed the guitar, but there are also some European composers who haven’t. My personal favourites are the last two: Szymanowski, whose omaggio has a suggestively alluring melodic charm, and Stravinsky, who sounds as jagged as he looks on Jean Cocteau’s famous drawing of him playing The Rite of Spring.

Nineteenth century Cuban pianist and composer Manuel Samuell was perhaps the most important musician in creating Cuban national music, forging together influences from French contredanse with African rhythms. Habanera, mambo, rumba, salsa, all have their origin here. Leo Brouwer arranged eight of Samuell’s dances for guitar and the whole suite is like a hors d’oeuvre of tasty melodies and rhythms. Anyone can find a favourite piece here – try, for example, the melancholy No. VII Recuerdos tristes or the lively No. VIII La Maria.

Brouwer’s Hoja de album (Album Leaf): La gota de agua (The Raindrop) is truly descriptive, with sparse drops and long silences in between. The final composition on this disc is by Brouwer’s friend and protégé Joaquin Clerch. Yemaya is a goddess from the Afro-Cuban Santería-Yoruba religion. She is described as the ocean, the essence of motherhood and a protector of children and she appears in many guises. Clerch’s composition, which is in seven short sections played without a break, starts almost inaudibly with the wind blowing over the waves. Then we are confronted with Yemaya’s many and varied personalities before we are again transported to where we started.

Devine confirms through this disc his position as one of the most accomplished guitarists now before the public and for the many admirers of Brouwer’s music this is an essential buy. Devine contributes his own highly informative liner-notes and Norbert Kraft and Bonnie Silver have once again produced an immaculate recording. Of the many precious jewels in Naxos’s luminous crown, their guitar collection is certainly one of brightest shining.

-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International

The Cuban composer, Leo Brouwer had Isaac Nicola as his guitar tutor and studied at both the Juilliard and at Hartt College. He has recorded for DG and Erato. His musical activities have grown to include conducting. He was permanent conductor of the Orquesta Nacional de Cuba (1981-2003). His catalogue takes in some 300 works many of which have been recorded.

Brouwer has freshened our expectations of the classical guitar. While not rejecting the work of Rodrigo he has revived the genre with dissonant draughts that permeate recognisable moods and manners. Hispanic coolness and passion are still present but the progress and structure of ideas is achieved through suggestion rather than direct statement. The Concerto Elegiaco is his third guitar concerto. It was written for the BBC and premiered by Julian Bream with the Langham Chamber Orchestra. In 1987 Bream and Brouwer recorded the piece with the RCA Victor Chamber Orchestra. The music is poised, rhythmically challenging and constantly in motion around subtle and beautiful tendrils of melody. On a very simplistic level you might describe this as Rodrigo filtered through Berg.

The Three Concertante Dances for string orchestra and guitar are more direct in expression with the elements of Iberian courtly passion we recognise from Rodrigo being engaged but they are mixed with a Stravinskian delicacy: sometimes steely, sometimes yielding. Subtle impressionistic half-lights are the order of the day in the second dance yet the plangent asides are developed with even sharper definition in the Elegiaco. The dances were premiered on Cuban Radio in 1958 by Brouwer and the Orchestra of Cuban Radio conducted by Roberto Valdés Arnau.

Lastly we hear guitar juxtaposed with string quartet. This Quintet, begun at age 18, was not completed until the composer was encouraged to do so by Italian guitarist Oscar Ghiglia who gave the premiere in Florence. It is a work of violent Tippett-like onslaughts by the quartet and of pattering rhythmic insurgency by the guitar. The slow central movement is a jewel and the standout track in the whole CD. A simple sinuous idea sings out in verdant innocence with a sentimental core - more Classic FM material.

A refreshing take on received wisdoms about the Latin-American classical guitar.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Margaret Brouwer’s music has for decades been admired for “inhabiting its own peculiarly bewitching harmonic world” (The New York Times). These recently composed pieces reflect her musical representations of particular events: Rhapsodic Sonata charts an internal journey of love, whereas Declaration is a set of songs that addresses ideas of violence and war. Composed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I Cry – Summer 2020 outlines a process of isolation and restriction. All Lines are Still Busy is a satirical monologue that should intrigue anyone who has been placed “on hold “during a telephone call.

REVIEWS:

Reactions – Songs and Chamber Music presents a rewarding glimpse into Brouwer’s rich compositional world and the broad tonal range it encompasses…[Brouwer] draws on her vast knowledge of classical music to create personalized expressions that render into compositional form the essence of a particular subject matter or emotional state.

-- Textura

Naxos presents a portrait CD of American Margaret Brouwer, born in 1940, featuring chamber music & songs. The program opens with an impassioned performance of the Rhapsodic Sonata for viola and piano by Eliesha Nelson and Shuai Wang. This pianist also acts expressively in the song cycle Declaration, sung very eloquently and sensitively by mezzo-soprano Sarah Beaty. The shorter pieces ‘I Cry – Summer 2020’ for violin & piano and The Lake for tenor & piano are also heard in very appealing interpretations.

-- Pizzicato

The American composer has the expressive skills to evoke the passions she sets out to describe – love, ecology, racism, even being trapped in telephone hell…Brouwer’s musical language – tonal with deft sprinklings of harmonic spice – draws the instruments into ardent and wistful conversations.

-- Gramophone

Brouwer: Guitar Music, Vol. 1

Brouwer: Guitar Music, Vol. 2

Brouwer: Guitar Music, Vol. 3