Joly Braga Santos

Started by Dundonnell, August 20, 2007, 02:51:55 PM

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J.Z. Herrenberg

I'll be downloading Freitas Branco's 2nd symphony today (eMusic/Atma)...
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Christo

Quote from: Jezetha on July 09, 2008, 02:30:21 AM
I'll be downloading Freitas Branco's 2nd symphony today (eMusic/Atma)...

And I plan to visit the toilet.  :)
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Christo on July 09, 2008, 02:31:24 AM
And I plan to visit the toilet.  :)

Too much information and terribly OT.

;)
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Dundonnell

#223
Just got round to listening to the new Atma version of Luis Freitas Branco's Second Symphony(coupled with the Violin Concerto of Armando Jose Fernandes-Alexandre da Costa(violin) and the Extremadura Symphony Orchestra, Jesus Amigo).

I am, frankly, not sure what to make of it! My first impressions are that it does not move on beyond the 1st in quite the way I was expecting. The 1st certainly sounds more of a mixture of styles-late 19th/early 20th century French together with Iberian sultriness but with a fresh energy which I found captivating. The 2nd uses a Gregorian chant as a repeated motif and there are some passages of real splendour. The Andantino second movement is delightful. But...I think that the symphony is just a little bit too long, it might have benefited from some judicious paring down, and, ultimately, it didn't bowl me over in the way that Freitas Branco's pupil, Braga Santos, does. There are good tunes but nothing as overpowering as in the latter's symphonies, while the orchestration does not seem to me as masterly. Can hear echoes of Respighi but he did it better.

Possibly being unfair? Will need to listen again.

Johan-I look forward to your possibly entirely different conclusion!

Oh..and wasn't particularly taken by the Fernandes Violin Concerto but then I am not a great fan of romantic violin concertos!

Dundonnell

Jeffrey/Johan-any further comments on Freitas Branco's No.2?

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Dundonnell on July 13, 2008, 05:04:02 PM
Jeffrey/Johan-any further comments on Freitas Branco's No.2?

I'm going to download FB's 2nd today.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Christo

Quote from: Jezetha on July 09, 2008, 02:30:21 AM
I'll be downloading Freitas Branco's 2nd symphony today (eMusic/Atma)...

Quote from: Jezetha on July 13, 2008, 09:56:03 PM
I'm going to download FB's 2nd today.

$:)
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Christo on July 13, 2008, 10:49:04 PM
$:)

Erm... The Gurrelieder intervened.  0:) And Alkan. And Wagner.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

vandermolen

Quote from: Dundonnell on July 13, 2008, 05:04:02 PM
Jeffrey/Johan-any further comments on Freitas Branco's No.2?

I enjoyed No 2 but I heard it before No 1, which I think is better. I prefer Braga Santos to either but I will continue to collect the Naxos series. I quite liked the Violin concerto but it is not 'desert island' material.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Christo

#229
My first impression is, that some of Freitas Branco's best music lies hidden, perhaps not in his symphonies, but in his symphonic poems. Wikipedia lists four of them, al written in the same period: Antero De Quental (1908), Paraísos Artificais [Artificial Paradises] (1910), Tentações de S. Frei Gil (1911), Vathek (1913).

I own Portugalsom CDs with the first and fourth, and Vathek - based on the story by William Beckford, as Jezetha reminded us already - is quite an interesting piece indeed. Based on an old Moorish theme, it basically presents a series of variations. The booklet gets quite excited about the third variation, a 59-part fugato for strings, seen as the culmination of modern Portuguese music.

I hope to be able to play it again, later today. Rob Barnett, in his famous Musicweb review of all the oop Portugalsom CDs in 2001 (http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2001/Nov01/Branco.htm), wrote about Vathek:

>> Broadly speaking this magically orchestrated music is in the same territory as Schmitt's Salome, Dukas's La Péri, Rimsky's Sheherazade and Griffes' Pleasure Dome. Raw brass fanfares, violent dances, Pierrot twilights, voluptuous Franckian climaxes (cf Psyche), drizzling doom and birdsong (uncannily similar to Holbrooke's Birds of Rhiannon music - a legend now appropriated by MacMillan), Vathek was in sympathy with Flecker's pilgrims who took the Golden Road to Samarkand for 'lust of knowing what should not be known.' There is a wholly fitting sense of exhaustion in the epilogue. The work is in eight separately tracked segments played contiguously. <<

                       
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

Dundonnell

Quote from: vandermolen on July 13, 2008, 11:44:02 PM
I enjoyed No 2 but I heard it before No 1, which I think is better. I prefer Braga Santos to either but I will continue to collect the Naxos series. I quite liked the Violin concerto but it is not 'desert island' material.

Agreed and agreed :) :)

Dundonnell

Quote from: Christo on July 14, 2008, 12:21:23 AM
My first impression is, that some of Freitas Branco's best music lies hidden, perhaps not in his symphonies, but in his symphonic poems. Wikipedia lists four of them, al written in the same period: Antero De Quental (1908), Paraísos Artificais [Artificial Paradises] (1910), Tentações de S. Frei Gil (1911), Vathek (1913).

I own Portugalsom CDs with the first and fourth, and Vathek - based on the story by William Beckford, as Jezetha reminded us already - is quite an interesting piece indeed. Based on an old Moorish theme, it basically presents a series of variations. The booklet gets quite excited about the third variation, a 59-part fugato for strings, seen as the culmination of modern Portuguese music.

I hope to be able to play it again, later today. Rob Barnett, in his famous Musicweb review of all the oop Portugalsom CDs in 2001 (http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2001/Nov01/Branco.htm), wrote about Vathek:

>> Broadly speaking this magically orchestrated music is in the same territory as Schmitt's Salome, Dukas's La Péri, Rimsky's Sheherazade and Griffes' Pleasure Dome. Raw brass fanfares, violent dances, Pierrot twilights, voluptuous Franckian climaxes (cf Psyche), drizzling doom and birdsong (uncannily similar to Holbrooke's Birds of Rhiannon music - a legend now appropriated by MacMillan), Vathek was in sympathy with Flecker's pilgrims who took the Golden Road to Samarkand for 'lust of knowing what should not be known.' There is a wholly fitting sense of exhaustion in the epilogue. The work is in eight separately tracked segments played contiguously. <<

                       

We must hope then that Naxos decides to couple the remaining symphonies with some of these intriguing sounding symphonic poems!

J.Z. Herrenberg

Just listened to Freitas Branco's Second Symphony. I'm afraid there isn't much to say about this piece. It doesn't reach for the stars. Stylistically it's firmly 19th century, which isn't an indictment in itself, were it not for the fact that there is nothing of the visionary or passionate side of the 19th century either... It's all rather bland, 'national school' and innocent. I spent an agreeable 40 or so minutes with it, but I don't think I'll be panting for a second listen very soon.

Braga Santos is, on the evidence of this work at least, a vastly superior composer.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Dundonnell

Quote from: Jezetha on July 14, 2008, 01:07:47 PM
Just listened to Freitas Branco's Second Symphony. I'm afraid there isn't much to say about this piece. It doesn't reach for the stars. Stylistically it's firmly 19th century, which isn't an indictment in itself, were it not for the fact that there is nothing of the visionary or passionate side of the 19th century either... It's all rather bland, 'national school' and innocent. I spent an agreeable 40 or so minutes with it, but I don't think I'll be panting for a second listen very soon.

Braga Santos is, on the evidence of this work at least, a vastly superior composer.

Well you have been a little harsher than I was, Johan, but fundamentally I agree with you :)

I suspect that you have not yet heard No.1 however? I was pleased to learn that Jeffrey agreed with me that it is better than No.2. Don't let your reaction to the Second put you off giving the (cheap) Naxos recording of the First a try. Ok, it is a 19th century work too but with a fresher energy and a most beautiful slow movement(though not the equal of any by Braga Santos!)

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Dundonnell on July 14, 2008, 01:36:44 PM
Well you have been a little harsher than I was, Johan, but fundamentally I agree with you :)

I suspect that you have not yet heard No.1 however? I was pleased to learn that Jeffrey agreed with me that it is better than No.2. Don't let your reaction to the Second put you off giving the (cheap) Naxos recording of the First a try. Ok, it is a 19th century work too but with a fresher energy and a most beautiful slow movement(though not the equal of any by Braga Santos!)

Of course I'll give the First a listen (when it's downloadable from eMusic).  0:)
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Christo

#235
Quote from: Jezetha on July 14, 2008, 01:50:48 PM
Of course I'll give the First a listen (when it's downloadable from eMusic).  0:)

Duly noted.  $:)

And I agree about the Andante of the First, as I've probably reported here before. Indeed, the First is a lovely piece that helps `explain' Braga Santos' early style a lot - at least the first two movements do. The rather explosive symphonic poem Vathek from 1913 reminded me too, listening to it gain yesterday, that there are more sides to Freitas Branco. So, I plan to give all symphonies a try anyhow. Btw: there are five of them, the last one a choral symphony `Sinfonia do Trabalho' frrom 1954 that isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia article (and was perhaps never performed?).

See for some more detail: http://www.amsc.com.pt/musica/compositores/luisfb.htm

BTW, I now read there that the Second represents a start in a new, neoclassicist direction (`orientação diferente, virada a um neoclassicismo'). Could it be that that's what you've been hearing, Jezetha?

... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich

Beside my current Henry Purcell listening experience and due to lack of time, I must say I got stuck with Braga Santos Symphony No.4 very much. Also, because I can't stop listening to the #4 Andante, epic stuff.

J.Z. Herrenberg

#237
Quote from: Christo on July 14, 2008, 10:46:35 PM
BTW, I now read there that the Second represents a start in a new, neoclassicist direction (`orientação diferente, virada a um neoclassicismo'). Could it be that that's what you've been hearing, Jezetha?

You won't be reading this till after you have returned from Crete, but let's answer the question: what I hear is no neoclassicism Stravinsky-style, but a stylistic return to the 19th century in its nationalist school manifestation, now on a Portuguese basis. But not in the way a Bartók or Enescu reinvent this.

Quote from: Wurstwasser on July 22, 2008, 01:13:26 AM
Beside my current Henry Purcell listening experience and due to lack of time, I must say I got stuck with Braga Santos Symphony No.4 very much. Also, because I can't stop listening to the #4 Andante, epic stuff.

Excellent!
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

DavidRoss

Presently listening to BS's 4th again (Cassuto), which I liked enough on first hearing to follow up with an order for the 2nd (also Cassuto).  That was several weeks ago and I just received notice yesterday that it has finally shipped from the distribution center.   As for the 4th, although it's a trifle more bombastic than I prefer, I like it more each time I hear it, and I like his use of color throughout.  In fact, I have it on in the background at the moment and it keeps calling to me, requesting my full attention.
"Maybe the problem most of you have ... is that you're not listening to Barbirolli." ~Sarge

"The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." ~Margaret Thatcher

vandermolen

I thought that I would revive our old friend despite a warning in red that 'this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days.' Also, rather disconcertingly when I searched for JBS (as we so-called Braga Santos experts call him) I received a zero reply with a message saying' perhaps you were looking for brag snots'. But then I remembered Lethe's excellent list and, sure enough, there he was - the solitary Portuguese entry.

Anyway, I have just been listening to the wonderfully inspiriting conclusion of Symphony No 3 and thought that I would give it a plug (together with Symphony No 4) for anyone who has not yet discovered him.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).