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Discography
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Silvestre Revueltas
- La Coronela (The Lady Colonel)
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Polish, Purpose
Santa Barbara Symphony releases its first CD.
Los Angeles Times
By Josef Woodward
The Santa Barbara Symphony, a fine ensemble by most
any standard, has been steadily refining its sound and
purpose over the past few years, with the impressive
and forward-thinking conductor Gisèle Ben-Dor at the
helm.
Ben-Dor has polished and juiced up the symphony in
subtle ways, taking things slowly, careful to avoid
shocking the essentially conservative constituency of
the core symphony audience.
Now comes a new milestone in the symphony's history,
and it's available at a music retailer near you.
The symphony has released its debut recording, on the
Koch label, and the results are quite thrilling. It's
significant enough that the orchestra has, at last,
made the leap into the recording domain, but the nature
of the project gives it extra distinction, and could
help this album venture out into the larger world of
important classical recordings.
Ben-Dor, whose Uruguayan roots have led her to champion
Latin American music, has used the occasion to offer
world premiere recordings of music by the late - even
great - Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940).
Revueltas, whose modernist approach and adaptation
of folk materials encourages parallels with Charles
Ives and Bartók, has been a cult hero whose music has
continually been rescued from obscurity and neglect.
Viewed as a naive rebel without the proper allegiance
to Europe, he worked outside the classical mainstream
and died too young, done in by alcohol. But he left
a sizable cachet of music worth hearing - for example,
the music on the new CD.
The main attraction on this release is a buried treasure,
"La Coronela (The Lady Colonel)" - a ballet written
toward the end of Revueltas' life, in collaboration
with the Mexican choreographer named simply Waldeen.
Like the composer's story, the work itself has had
a circuitous history. It was premiered in 1940, but
fell into obscurity until revived and reorchestrated
in 1957, the original orchestra having been lost.
At this juncture, the music is vibrant and smart, especially
with the clear yet energetic treatment of Ben-Dor and
her charges. They bring out the post-Stravinsky-esque
balances of sweetness and well-honed anarchy-tunes and
tumult-and deliver a piece that seems at the least a
modest revelation of Mexican modernism.
Gilles Apap, the charismatic concertmaster and an impressive
soloist in his own right, handles the solo part on the
finale, "El juicio final (The Last Judgement)."
The Revueltas touch is characteristic in this movement,
the longest of the four in the ballet.
It begins on a sardonically triumphant note, its festive
folk rhythms tinged with polytonal tensions, leading
into moments of angst and melancholy.
Also on the CD is the plaintive "Itinerarios" (1938).
To close, comes the furtively propulsive 1932 piece
"Colorines," performed by the English Chamber Orchestra,
another of Ben-Dor's conducting connections. These two
pieces further exemplify Revueltas' muscularity and
panache.
Revueltas, like the better-known and embraced composer
Carlos Chavez, worked toward a sense of Mexican musical
identity, but his results were more rugged and challenging
to the ear.
In this ballet, as elsewhere in his music, elements
are drawn together in a kind of mad, enthralling mosaic,
taking in aspects of sentimental, indigenous musical
folklore with the disjointed, nonlinear qualities of
life in the 20th century.
In short, written more than 50 years ago, this is very
much music for our time. And it's a cause for civic
pride that the Santa Barbara Symphony is a conduit for
its continuing exposure.
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