World-premiere recordings of early works that shed new light on a foundational figure in Mexican classical music. Until recently, it was widely believed that Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) only began composing in his thirties-during the final decade of a life tragically cut short by alcoholism and pneumonia. By the age of 39, he had already secured his place as the most important Mexican composer of his generation, with orchestral masterpieces such as Sensemayá and La noche de los Mayos: works notably less indebted to European models than those of his elders and contemporaries, including Carlos Chávez. The rediscovery of these manuscripts, as recently as 2024, reveals that Revueltas had in fact been composing from his teenage years, and that he was an accomplished pianist as well as a violinist. This pioneering album presents 24 piano pieces, none exceeding four minutes except for a two-movement Sonatina, with the longest being a Lento doloroso. Most date from 1915, when Revueltas studied at the National Conservatoire, though later works stem from his years in Chicago (1919) and 1924, when he wrote his final piano piece, a Satie-like caprice titled Tragedia en forma de rábano (Tragedy in the Form of a Radish). Together, these works form a kind of musical diary, reflecting both the influence of his teachers, Manuel Ponce and Felipe Villanueva, and the emergence of a distinctly Mexican voice evolving between romanticism and modernism. Of Mexican and German heritage, pianist Rodolfo Ritter-professor at the Conservatoire in Mexico City-is a leading advocate for the music of his homeland. As performer, editor, and musicologist, he has premiered numerous works by Mexican composers while also performing the concerto repertoire from Chopin to Bartók. His combination of scholarship and artistry makes him the ideal interpreter to bring these long-forgotten piano works by Revueltas to international attention.
Americascapes 2 / Treviño, Basque National Orchestra
Ondine
CD
$18.99Nov 15, 2024
This sequel to the Gramophone Award-nominated Americascapes album (ODE 1396-2) by the Basque National Orchestra and Robert Trevino is a thrilling and a deeply personal journey into the music of three American composers. All three composers had very unique aesthetic worlds and with two of the composers conductor Robert Trevino also had direct artistic collaboration. Where my first 'Americascapes' album looked at lesser-known major American works that had influenced European composers (rather than the other way around), for this follow-up, I went back to a more basic thought - "What is America?". Since America is many things to millions of people, I realise that my question had to mean, "What is America to me? (...) Selecting the composers for this American Opus took well over a year. Yet I eventually refined the list to these three composers, with all of whom I feel a close kinship and all of whom are deeply meaningful to me. Two of them I even had a direct artistic relationship with. As a group, they also embody some of the diversity and the radically different aesthetics that thrive in the Americas." (Robert Trevino)
REVIEW:
The hunt for buried treasure is quite an industry these days, but coming up with gold is far from guaranteed. No problem, it appears, for Robert Treviño and the Basque National Orchestra. American Opus is the sequel to 2021’s excellent Americascapes (Ondine ODE 1396-2) and once again the Mexican-American conductor demonstrates a gift for sorting the wheat from the chaff. With the Revueltas set beside the Crumb and the Walker, Americascapes Volume 2 is a complex, thoroughly satisfying national portrait.
The worldwide lockdowns of 2020/21 proved highly fruitful for US-based violinist Itamar Zorman in his quest to seek out new repertoire. A virtual voyage around the world yielded a discovery of many lesser known and rarely played works for violin, which he presented in 2020 as a livestreamed video series entitled Hidden Gems. From this musical treasure trove he selected 10 pieces for his new album Violin Odyssey, produced by Grammy Award-winning Judith Sherman. The far-reaching geographical origins of the repertoire – from New Zealand to the United States by way of Sudan, China, Russia, Poland, Croatia, Czech Republic, Israel and Mexico – reveal a fascinating variety of styles and cultural diversity in these seldom heard works. Two larger works set the framework of the album – Slavonic Sonata (1917) written by Croatian noblewoman Dora Pejacevic and the Second Sonata for Violin and Piano (1927) by Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff. While sharing Eastern European flavor, the two sonatas, written only ten years apart, are worlds apart stylistically. These particularly dramatic works are complemented by a program of shorter pieces with evocative titles that suggest little adventures and encounters on a traveler’s journey.
Two Classic Political Film Scores - Revueltas: Redes - Copland: The City / Gil-Ordóñez, PostClassical Ensemble
Naxos
CD
$13.99$19.99Save 30%Mar 11, 2022
Revueltas and Copland wrote prolifically for film, and these scores are their greatest achievements in the medium. The scores were crafted for two of the most formidable and politically motivated films of the time. Redes is a story of victimized fishermen in Mexico - and the subject matter drew from Revueltas passionate music that Copland himself admiringly described as 'vibrant and colorful'. The City is a documentary that reveals the musical missing link between Copland's 'urban' and 'country' idioms, prescient of minimalism, and masterly in construction and effect. Without narration or dialogue, both scores are heard here for the first time in full.
El árbol de la vida: Music from Mexico / Weber, Orchestra of Eduardo Mata University
Naxos
CD
$19.99Jan 11, 2019
The impetus of the Mexican Revolution galvanized the use of Indigenous melodies in a new and original wave of musical compositions that loosened dependence on European models. José Moncayo’s infectiously joyful ‘Huapango,’ one of Mexico’s best-known works is, in its distinct national character, deeply rooted in folk music. Silvestre Revueltas’s ‘La Noche de los mayas’ is a symphonic suite derived from film music that employs Mexican percussion instruments in a vividly inventive way. The process of linking folk influence with classical techniques continues to the present day with Hebert Vazquez’s ‘El arbol de la vida’ which uses the folk style known as the ‘son.’ Mexican guitarist Pablo Garibay has established himself as a leading force on the international classical guitar scene with a repertoire that includes the great guitar concertos, notably those by Rodrigo, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ponce, and Villa-Lobos. As a concerto soloist, he made his debut with the Orquesta Filarmonica de la Ciudad de Mexico and has since appeared as a soloist with orchestras throughout Europe and the Americas.
REVIEW:
This youth orchestra — founded in 2011 by the conductor — sound magnificent here. They are associated with Eduardo Mata University, and they consist of the finest young musicians of Mexico. They play with real mastery and joy — ensemble is precise, no matter how difficult the music; and the strings, in particular, can sound really lush and lovely. Anyone with interest in Mexican music should have this—or guitarists who are looking for a new, exciting work with orchestra.
Silvestre Revueltas’ score for the 1935 film Redes (“Nets”) remains one of his greatest works, full of captivating rhythms, vivid instrumental color, and characteristic melodic inspiration. It is splendidly performed here by the PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez, newly synchronized to a lovely restored version of the original film. The movie itself isn’t much. Although cinematographer Paul Strand’s work is gorgeous as visual art, the story is a leftist morality play at its most primitive.
Villagers in small Mexican fishing community vainly struggle against the evil rich guy (complete with waxed mustache). At the start, the poor fisherman Miro begs for money to take his sick son to the hospital. Evil rich guy refuses. The child dies and is buried in a lavishly decorated coffin that makes one wonder why they didn’t invest the funeral funds in medical care in the first place. The grieving dad organizes the villagers and they go fishing, determined to resist the exploitation of the town’s wealthy business class. They catch fish. As they return with their catch there’s a rumble with the rich guy’s team. Soldiers are called in and the villagers flee, but Miro gets shot in the scuffle. He nobly ignores the pain, but dies anyway. End of story.
The entire film takes about an hour. There are fabulous shots of the Mexican seaside, lots of macho posing, and of course, fishing sequences. Thrilling it is not, but Revueltas’ score is sensational. Not being terribly into visuals, I would hope that Naxos will release a complete soundtrack album. The music is certainly worth hearing beyond the already familiar suite. Indeed, the film is scored almost throughout. Dialogue is minimal. For the last fifteen minutes or so in this new version the dialogue had to be abandoned in favor of the new soundtrack’s continuous music (English subtitles remain). If you want to hear the (few) spoken bits, the original film with its original soundtrack is thoughtfully included.
You also get several bonus features: discussions of Revueltas, his work in film, his politics, and the music, all produced by PostClassical Ensemble Executive Director Joseph Horowitz. I didn’t watch these, as I general ignore all such things. As a matter of principal, I believe that musical works stand or fall on their own merits, as entertainment, and nothing bores me more than being preached at or having the pleasure of listening turned into an academic symposium. I do recognize, however, that there is a time and place for such things, and other listeners/viewers may feel very differently. To see how Revueltas’ music enhances this visually beautiful film is worth experiencing just for itself, and requires no special pleading.
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.
Latin-American Classics - Revueltas: Orchestral Music
Naxos
CD
$19.99Nov 01, 2002
Sensemayá • La noche de los Mayas • La coronela
Silvestre Revueltas was born in Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango, a small town in the north of Mexico. As a child, he showed great interest in music, his early artistic bent apparent by 1906. When his family moved to Mexico City, he entered the National Conservatory of Music, studying the violin with José Rocabruna and composition with Rafael J. Tello.
In 1917 he moved to the United States to study at St Edward College in San Antonio, Texas, and later in Chicago, remaining there until 1924. After a rather long concert tour in Mexico and in the United States, he returned to his home country, where he remained from 1929 onwards. In 1929 Carlos Chávez offered him the position of assistant conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de México, which he held until 1936. Working together they were able to do much to promote Mexican music, offering a rich repertoire including works by the most outstanding and prominent names of the period. At the same time Revueltas began a very successful career as a prolific composer, activity which brought Cuauhnahuc (Cuernavaca) (1930), Esquinas (Corners) (1931), Ventanas (Windows) and Colorines (Coloured Beads) (1932), Janitzio (1933), Caminos (Roads) (1934), Homenaje a Federico García Lorca (Hommage to Federico García Lorca) (1936), Itinerarios (Routes) (1937) and Sensemayá (1938). This series of works constitutes a vivid example of his extraordinary contribution to the form of the national Mexican symphonic poem, with compositions that show his originality and freshness of inspiration, together with his technical mastery.
Revueltas - Centennial Anthology / Stokowski, Mata, Et Al
Sony Masterworks
CD
$16.98Sep 14, 1999
Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas possessed one of the most original and vital musical voices of the 20th century. He also led a wild life. Brilliant and quarrelsome, he was active in revolutionary politics, feuded with fellow artists such as Carlos Chavez and managed to write a substantial body of work in only ten years before his death from acute alcoholism at the age of forty. The music is dynamic, fierce and colorful, influenced by Stravinsky and Bartók, modernist and imbued with folkloric flavor, though without actual quotation. Like the muralist Diego Rivera, Revueltas created a kind of mock-primitive, epic Mexico in his music, passionate and boldly etched (his best known work, the tone poem 'Sensemaya' is often referred to as a Mexican 'Rite of Spring.) This is an amazingly generous collection, including chamber works and film scores, the quasi-symphonic 'La Noche de los mayas' and not one but two versions of 'Sensemaya,' the bonus being the spirited (if rhythmically errant) debut recording made by Leopold Stokowski in 1947.
