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Discography
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Silvestre Revueltas
- La Coronela (The Lady Colonel)
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Gramophone
January, 1999
With two first recordings on this disc (only Itinerarios,
under the title Caminos, has appeared previously
- ASV, 8/89), the enterprising and charismatic Uruguayan
conductor Gisèle Ben-Dor usefully extends the already
considerable representation in the catalogue of Silvestre
Revueltas, whose irregular lifestyle led to his death
at the age of 40 after a mere decade of creativity as
a composer. His Colorines, stridently exotic
in instrumentation and rhythmically pungent, shows influences
from native folk music (particularly in a less frantic
section) and, conspicuously, from The Rite of Spring;
the work's weakness lies in its stylistic inconsistency,
but it is brilliantly performed by the ECO and equally
brilliantly recorded. More substantial and less eagerly
striving for effect, but just as virtuostically scored,
and often very moving (especially in the section for
solo soprano saxophone), is Itinerarios, an extended
threnody for the Spain which had just become engulfed
in a bitter civil war.
La Coronela, a ballet first performed two years
later, in 1940 (the Baker-Slonimsky dictionary here
is a year out), is something of a confection. Not only
did Revueltas die before completing it (it was finished
by Blas Galindo and orchestrated by Candelario Huizar),
but all their performance material was then lost, and
the score had, as far as possible, to be reconstructed
by the conductor of the premiere; but the final movement
is in fact a compilation from two of Revueltas's earlier
film scores. The scenario, developed from a series of
skeleton figure engravings illustrated in the booklet,
deals with the overthrow by the peasant class of the
decadent bourgeoisie. The opposing factions are delineated,
not without touches of satiric humour, in a generally
less radical idiom - the "For the fallen" episode reveals
an unexpectedly diatonic lyricism - though the composer
makes it abundantly clear that his ardent sympathies
lie with the revolutionaries. As with many ballets,
however, a detailed knowledge of the scenario is neccessary
to make sense of the course of the music, however vividly
it is presented here.
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