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Revueltas Festival
Reviews:
Review from KLASSIK HUETE
Silverstre Revueltas Music Festival in Santa Barbara
By Dietrich Burghofer
Translated by Corinna Assman
A Festival of Discoveries.
Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas was born on the
last day of the 19th Century, December 31st 1899. He
died at the age of 40, on October 7th 1940. Neglected
at first, his work has, experienced a renaissance on
the occasion of his 100th birthday (see "KLASSIK heute"
1/2000 page 49), thanks to the busy Uruguayan born,
American-Israeli conductor Gisèle Ben-Dor, who organized
a Revueltas Festival in Santa Barbara to celebrate the
anniversary. Gisèle Ben-Dor has led the Santa Barbara
Symphony Orchestra since 1994. She has already recorded
Revueltas' music for the ballet La Coronela with
the orchestra for KOCH International two years ago.
Santa Barbara, on the sunny coast of California, originally
a missionary station led by Franciscan friars, it is
a popular touristic attraction today. It was at the
Mission where the first chamber music concert took place,
with works by Javier Alvarez, Mario Lavista, Leonardo
Velasques, Heitor Villa-Lobos and, of course, Silvestre
Revueltas. The first work, Javier Alvarez' string quartet
called Metro Chbacano was an ideal appetizer
for a two-hour concert of Latin-American music. Eight
pieces by Revueltas followed, ranging from his first
compositions for piano (1924) to his mature quintet
called Two Little Serious Pieces, composed in
1940. These performances allowed a fine appreciation
of the development in Revueltas' compositions. The advanced
Three Little Pieces for violin and piano (1932),
suggested that the composer could be thought of as the
Bela Bartok of Mexican music. The three short movements
develop from the rhythmic energy found in traditional
Mexcian music. Later chamber msuci works, such as Ocho
Por Radio, written in 1933, already present the
kind of ensemble capable of generating the typical "Revueltas
sound": trumpet, two woodwinds (clarinet and bassoon),
drums and four solo strings. After only a few beats,
one feels transported to a Mexican market place. Revueltas'
easy going, joyful music seems, at first, to be a Divertimento,
yet it can take a sudden turn, indicating states of
deep melancholy, as in the elegiac bassoon solo from
Ocho Por Radio.
A special angle: Film music
One of Gisèle Ben-Dor's chief goals was to present
Revueltas' music films. La Noche de Los Mayas
was shown in its original version, with English subtitles,
with the orchestral background of the concert work by
the same name clearly becoming a Mexican version of
the Romeo and Juliet theme. A highlight of the Festival
was a three-hour marathon concert with the American
premiere of Heitor Villa-Lobos' Tenth Symphony, Amerindia,
and the original music to the film Redes (Netze)
composed by Revueltas, played the orchestra live with
simultaneous showing of the film. The Tenth Symphony
of Villa-Lobos, commissioned to celebrate the 400 anniversary
of the founding of the city of Sao Paulo, was composed
in 1952. This monumental one hour long work - actually
an Oratorio for Soli, Choir and Orchestra, fell into
oblivion soon after its premiere. It will be available
on CD soon, having been recorded by Gisèle Ben-Dor and
the Santa Barbara Symphony for Koch International. The
film music of Redes, a Mexican film about impoverished
fishermen, successfully unionizing against the exploitation
by urban businessmen, turned out to the best of Revueltas'
scores. Becoming acquainted with the film and the music
allows a deeper view of the composer's talent and originality:
He always succeeds in producing suggestive sounds which
directly affect the listener after a few beats. However,
in the long run, the music is so strong, that it makes
the film almost unnecessary. A ballet performance would
be ideal. On the last day of the Festival, Gisèle Ben-Dor
conducted two concert including some of the most important
ensemble pieces of Revueltas (Planos, Sensemaya,
Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca). One of the concerts
was for children. Little known are the works for the
stage, such as Erase un Rey by Luis Cordoba (1940)
and the pantomime music to the fairy tale El Renacuajo
Paseador by the Colombian poet Rafael Pombo.
One must congratulate Gisèle Ben-Dor for her initiative.
She completed an enormous work load, and her courage
and energy are to be admired. Even with scarce rehearsal
time available, one must remember that the Santa Barbara
Symphony Orchestra is financed almost exclusively by
private donations, 21 pieces by Silvestre Revueltas
were performed in four days. That's about half of the
complete output of a composer, of whom, according to
unanimous opinions of the many journalists traveling
from all over the world, more will be said in the future.
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