The Sounds of São Paulo at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 19 October 2022 20:46

Written by Jack Angstreich

Marin Alsop and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. Photo by Jennifer Taylor

At Carnegie Hall, on the evening of Friday, October 14th, I had the enormous pleasure of seeing the superb musicians of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra—in their debut at this venue—under the brilliant direction of Marin Alsop, playing in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Brazil’s independence.

The concert began magnificently with a dazzling performance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s extraordinary Scheherazade. In his exemplary notes for this program, Jack Sullivan had this to say about the piece:

The sound of the modern orchestra owes a great deal to this 1888 work and the miniatures in its immediate orbit:Capriccio espagnoland theRussian Easter Festival Overture.(Important earlier pieces, such as the hauntingAntar,were rarely performed in the West and thus made little impact.) Rimsky-Korsakov repealed the thick, square sound of the standard 19th-century orchestra, liberating the brass and percussion, inaugurating a new shimmer and transparency in the strings, and creating coloristic effects often inseparable from the themes.

He added: “Rimsky-Korsakov conceived of his piece as a riff on the tale—each movement is one of Scheherazade’s stories, and the finale recaps the themes from each one in a blazing apotheosis—but he never meant for the work to be a literal narrative.” And: “The movement titles, according to the composer, were meant as ‘hints to direct but slightly the hearer’s fancy,’ leaving an impression of ‘numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders.’”

The opening movement, “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship,” was sumptuous, while the succeeding “The Legend of the Calendar Prince” was both lyrical and dancelike. The third movement, “The Young Prince and the Young Princess,” featured march-like rhythms, and the finale was the most variegated of the sections in texture and mood, building to a rousing climax but concluding quietly.

The second half of the event—devoted to the marvelous music of the greatest Brazilian composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos—was also remarkable, starting exquisitely with a magisterial rendition of the glorious Prelúdio from Bachianas brasileiras No. 4. Sullivan comments: “Based on a hypnotic six-note theme, the Prelúdio fromBachianas brasileirasNo. 4 was originally composed for piano solo, but Villa-Lobos orchestrated it himself along with the other pieces in the set.”

This was followed by the intriguing Harmonica Concerto—nonetheless the weakest link in the program—with the impressive soloist, José Staneck, who has recorded it with this ensemble. The opening Allegro moderato, like the work as a whole, is more eccentric and modernistic and less melodious than the Prelúdio. The attractive, ensuingAndanteis more Romantic in character, while the finale is also quirky and is the most virtuosic movement, especially for its cadenza. Staneck rewarded enthusiastic applause with a charming improvisation on Scheherazade’s theme that transformed into Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipanema.”

The program closed exhilaratingly with a joyous account of the also unconventional, stunning Chôros No. 10, featuring the outstanding São Paulo Symphony Choir. Sullivan’s description is as follows:

Chôros No. 10, one of 14 compositions with the “Chôros” label, is one of Villa-Lobos’s most exuberant and original creations. It is also fervidly patriotic, an overt manifestation of his well-known characterization of himself as “very Brazilian. In my music, I let the rivers and seas of this great Brazil sing. I don’t put a gag on the tropical exuberance of her forests and skies, which I intuitively transpose to everything I write.”

He adds:

Its blazing originality was too much for the baffled audience at the 1926 Rio de Janeiro premiere conducted by the composer. A year later, after Villa-Lobos began a sojourn in Paris, a Parisian critic called it a “huge and alarming orchestral fresco … an art which we do not recognize but to which we must now give a new name.”

And:

Soaring above the dense bitonal texture, the sopranos sing a popular polka, “Rasga o coração” (“Tear the Heart Apart”) by Anacleto Medeiros, which unites, in Villa-Lobos’s words, the “Brazilian heart” and “the Brazilian land.” (Because of a long-fought copyright lawsuit, the text of the poem, by Catulo da Paixão Cearense, was replaced by a wordless vocalise, but the words have been restored in some recent performances.)

In response to a standing ovation, Alsop led the musicians in playing two fabulous encores: Clóvis Pereira and César Guerra-Peixe’s Mourão, recorded by this ensemble for an album of Brazilian dances, and an orchestration of Edu Lobo’s popular song, “Pe de Vento.”

I hope this will be the first of many local appearances of these accomplished artists.

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