Revueltas: Redes / Copland: The City. 2 Classic Political Film Scores

Presentation

As in the Thirties, political art is today upon us: writers and painters, composers and dramatists understandably feel impelled to espouse social justice.

Rarely does political art achieve permanence. Historically, Russians, Germans and Mexicans have been better at it than practitioners in the United States. Why this should be so is an interesting and important question. Mexico in the 1930s was a mecca for artists who wanted to make a difference. It attracted Aaron Copland, Sergei Eisenstein, Langston Hughes, John Steinbeck, Paul Strand. The Mexican muralists – and also a remarkable Mexican composer, Silvestre Revueltas – combined politics and aesthetics to inspirationally assert national pride and purpose.

The two scores here recorded originate with 1930s political films that retain historic and artistic interest. Both Revueltas and Copland migrated far to the political left during the Depression years. Though both composed copiously for film, Redes and The City are their peak achievements writing for the movies: consequential films whose music is an integral creative component. As neither Revueltas nor Copland extracted a comprehensive concert suite from Redes or The City, neither score is nearly as well known as it should be. The present recording, culled from a pair of Naxos DVDs featuring Redes and The City with newly recorded soundtracks, is in fact the first to present either score in full, without narration or dialogue.

At the same time, Redes and The City are as different as the composers themselves. Copland was a polished Modernist whose neo-Classical aesthetic was inspired by Stravinsky. Revueltas was a self-made genius, a born populist, whose idiom is as uncategorisable as it is original. Copland, in his lifetime and thereafter, was and is familiar and iconic. Revueltas, though increasingly performed, retains his reputation as “Mexico’s most famous unknown composer.” I would also call him the most important political composer of concert music produced in the Western Hemisphere, a composer for orchestra as distinctive and accomplished –his sonic signature is unique– as anyone to the north, Copland included.

– Joseph Horowitz

Program / tracklist

Silvestre Revueltas (1899–1940): Redes (1935)

• Introduction – 00:02:48
• Palms and Huts – 00:01:16
• The Village – 00:00:54
• Funeral – 00:04:22
• The Fisherman – 00:01:33
• Good Fishing – 00:06:36
• Nets – 00:03:19
• Fighting – Unity – 00:04:20
• Finale – 00:09:09

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) : The City (1939)

• A New England Village – 00:04:32
• Steeltown I – 00:04:37
• Steeltown II – 00:02:35
• The City I – 00:01:08
• The City II – 00:11:06
• New Town I – 00:00:41
• New Town II – 00:04:52
• New Town III – 00:00:40
• New Town IV – 00:01:33
• New Town V – 00:01:06
• Finale – 00:01:03

Artists

• PostClassical Ensemble
• Angel Gil-Ordóñez, conductor