Joly Braga Santos Orchestral Works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Joly Braga Santos
Label: Schwann
Magazine Review Date: 10/1997
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 62
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 31510-2
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Staccato brilhante |
Joly Braga Santos, Composer
Joly Braga Santos, Composer Meir Minsky, Conductor Orquestra Clássica do Porto |
Divertimento No 2 |
Joly Braga Santos, Composer
Joly Braga Santos, Composer Meir Minsky, Conductor Orquestra Clássica do Porto |
Concerto |
Joly Braga Santos, Composer
Joly Braga Santos, Composer Meir Minsky, Conductor Orquestra Clássica do Porto |
Sinfonietta |
Joly Braga Santos, Composer
Joly Braga Santos, Composer Meir Minsky, Conductor Orquestra Clássica do Porto |
Elegia a Vianna da Motta |
Joly Braga Santos, Composer
Joly Braga Santos, Composer Meir Minsky, Conductor Orquestra Clássica do Porto |
Author: Lionel Salter
Though he wrote six symphonies, three operas, several concertos, ballets and much film music, was conductor in the 1950s of the Oporto Symphony Orchestra and later was a lecturer at the Lisbon Conservatory, the name of Joly Braga Santos is all but unknown outside his native Portugal. Unless I am mistaken, this is the first disc of his music to be issued in this country; and it serves to chart the stylistic changes, from the age of 24 until his death 40 years later in 1988, of a composer who, it is very clear, deserves to be much better known. The earliest piece here is a heartfelt elegy for the distinguished pianist Vianna da Motta (a Liszt pupil, contemporary and friend of Busoni): its central section is a funeral cortege treated in the style of medieval organum. A taste for modality is evident in the attractively neo-classical Concerto in D (1951), which can be cordially recommended as repertoire for string orchestras everywhere: it contains a particularly eloquent slow movement and a vigorously upbeat rondo finale in 5/8 time.
A big change then came over the composer’s style after he had gone to study further – conducting with Hermann Scherchen, composition with Virgilio Mortari (though he himself attributed the change to “perception of the dynamic of the musical universe”, whatever that means). The 1963 Sinfonietta, whose variety of texture is a notable feature, not only embraces atonality (but not dodecaphony) but is imbued with an aggressive tone of voice, with a muscular first movement, a tense Adagio and an angrily pugnacious finale (presented with full-blooded energy and commitment by the admirable strings of this young orchestra, which was founded only three years ago). Braga Santos’s musical idiom had become more extreme by 1978, when the Divertimento No. 2 (also for strings only) was written. There is nothing ‘diverting’ in the entertaining sense about this: it is a highly dramatic work, the first of whose two movements is overhung by an atmosphere of menace which builds to a fearsome climax before finally subsiding, and whose second is characterized by tense agitation, with violent eruptions and vicious snarls. Three months before the composer’s death he penned the playful Staccato brilhante, a tinyjeu d’esprit in which he returned to diatonicism. Performances throughout this disc are excellent, and the recording is first-class. Do try this.'
A big change then came over the composer’s style after he had gone to study further – conducting with Hermann Scherchen, composition with Virgilio Mortari (though he himself attributed the change to “perception of the dynamic of the musical universe”, whatever that means). The 1963 Sinfonietta, whose variety of texture is a notable feature, not only embraces atonality (but not dodecaphony) but is imbued with an aggressive tone of voice, with a muscular first movement, a tense Adagio and an angrily pugnacious finale (presented with full-blooded energy and commitment by the admirable strings of this young orchestra, which was founded only three years ago). Braga Santos’s musical idiom had become more extreme by 1978, when the Divertimento No. 2 (also for strings only) was written. There is nothing ‘diverting’ in the entertaining sense about this: it is a highly dramatic work, the first of whose two movements is overhung by an atmosphere of menace which builds to a fearsome climax before finally subsiding, and whose second is characterized by tense agitation, with violent eruptions and vicious snarls. Three months before the composer’s death he penned the playful Staccato brilhante, a tiny
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