Disc reviews

The magnificent score is by Silvestre Revueltas. For this release the entire score is heard in a superb digital recording with the PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez, recorded in May 2014 at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Angel Gil-Ordóñez and Joseph Horowitz have long been dedicated to rescuing the lost memory of art, works that are not worth losing in amnesia. Gil-Ordóñez is a professor, musician and conductor of the Georgetown University orchestra; Horowitz is a musicologist. Both have now endeavored to remove from oblivion the historic Mexican film Redes, codirected in 1936 by Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gómez Muriel, with cinematography by Paul Strand. The film chronicles the harsh working conditions of a fishing village in Michoacan in post-revolutionary Mexico.

The film, meanwhile, is universally recognized as a masterpiece of Latin American cinema of the early twentieth century. At the head of the PostClassical Ensemble, Angel Gil-Ordoñez is excellent in the quasi-religious aspect of this music, which he renders in all its radical beauty.

Gil-Ordóñez and Horowitz have for years spread in the United States a vision radically stripped of exoticism of the best Spanish music, Falla, Albéniz, Óscar Esplá, or vindicating such singular composers as Bernard Herrmann. In some of those adventures, in which the excellent pianist Pedro Carboné usually participates, I have been fortunate to see myself included. The most recent is another great rediscovery: the premiere and recording of the entire score composed by Silvestre Revueltas for a legendary Mexican film, Redes, directed in 1935 by photographer Paul Strand and exiled Austrian filmmaker Fred Zinnemann.

Interestingly, Revueltas’ complete score has never been recorded before, so the recording by the Post-Classical Ensemble under Angel Gil-Ordóñez – one of the most inventive, clever and high-quality groups of its type – is a world première. The music rarely overlaps film dialogue, instead enhancing the story line and helping propel the narrative in highly effective program-music fashion.

The DVD release under the Naxos label is Redes, a 1935 Mexican neo-documentary about the plight of impoverished fishermen. Though the film is co-directed by Fred Zinnemann and stunningly photographed by Paul Strand, the real lure is the rich, pulsating score by Silvestre Revueltas, here dramatically recorded for the first time in stereo by the PostClassical Ensemble. It’s a pleasure to experience.

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.

Dvořák and America is a new recording that tells Dvořák’s story while he was in America: what he experienced, how he impacted Americans and their composers, and how he processed his experiences into music.

Excellent performances throughout, and text is provided for Hiawatha. This is a fascinating, unusual disk worthy of investigation.

The main piece of this program is the Hiawatha Melodrama, a concert work for narrator and orchestra showing the relation between Dvorak’s New World Symphony and Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha, which Dvorak said had inspired him in the symphony. This work and some other compositions honor the relation between the Czech composer and American music and culture.

This compendium of music and words provides a genuinely interesting and difficult-to-describe musical experience that provides considerable insight into the ways in which America influenced Dvořák and the way the great Czech composer returned the favor.

This is one of those rare “concept albums” where the concept actually works. It offers a truly fresh and interesting perspective on Dvorák’s American period, while still assembling a program that makes for enjoyable listening on its own. Few of us bother to read Longfellow’s poem anymore, but hearing it wedded to Dvorák’s music really does create a powerful and, somehow, nostalgic atmosphere of perhaps a more innocent age. I found it quite moving, and the rest of the performances very enjoyable. You will too.

The performances are unfailingly excellent, with Kevin Deas (the only holdover from the 2012 Buffalo concert) deserves special mention for his mellifluous yet passionate narration of the Hiawatha texts, which are provided in the liner notes. This is not background music, and deserves your full attention, including reading Horowitz’s fluent but comprehensive program notes.

Technically the recording is spotless and Sato Moughalian’s informative liner notes, from which I have culled most of the background information in the review, are exemplary. Those whose only acquaintance with Montsalvatge’s music so far has been the Cinco canciones negras should grab the opportunity to expand their knowledge by acquiring the present disc.

This disc won me over in its first twenty seconds—the skittering, playfully dissonant opening passage of Xavier Montsalvatge’s Folia Daliniana for four solo winds, strings, and percussion.

The Spanish composer Xavier Montsalvatge is no household name, but you couldn’t ask for a better introduction to his elegant, refined and piquant oeuvre than this vibrant collection by New York City’s Perspectives Ensemble. A well-balanced selection of pieces composed from 1969 to 1995, the disc is further abetted by the mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke’s ravishing voice and the violinist Tim Fain’s bravura solo work.

The Perspectives Ensemble under conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez brings us lovely performances that exemplify Montsalvatge in various stylistic guises, who like Stravinsky went through a number of transformations while still remaining recognizably himself.

Montsalvatge’s more-substantial works reach beyond ethnicity to communicate with cross-cultural genuineness that is highly effective – especially so in his major song cycles, such as Cinco invocaciones al Crucificado (1969), sung with intense feeling on Naxos’ new CD by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and conducted with sure-handed skill by Angel Gil-Ordóñez, one of the foremost exponents of modern small-ensemble works, both choral and instrumental.

Nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign FIlm in 1999, El Abuelo is a warm and wonderful film, set in the lush northern Spanish provinces on a beautiful seaside country estate. Beautifully filmed in color and scope, the film owes much to photographer Rául Pérez and composer Manuel Balboa, with the exquisite music complementing the sumptuous visuals.

The newly recorded soundtrack is largely excellent, with the PostClassical En­semble exemplifying the understated, light, and precise style of playing needed for Copland’s music. The striking saxophone solos are particularly evocative and compare very favorably to their counterparts on the original recording. (Such comparisons are easily made, since the DVD also includes the entire film with the original soundtrack as a bonus feature.)