Silvestre Revueltas - Sensemayá: Music of Silvestre Revueltas (Esa-Pekka Salonen)

Information

Composer: Silvestre Revueltas

• (01) Sensemayá
• (02) Ocho por radio
• (03) La Noche de los Mayas
• (07) Homenaje a Federico García Lorca
• (10) Ventanas
• (11) First Little Serious Piece
• (12) Second Little Serious Piece

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (1, 3-6, 10)
Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group (2, 7-9, 11, 12)
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor

Date: 1999
Label: Sony Classical

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Review

As the titles of two of the present works indicate, Revueltas immersed himself in the traditions of the Maya Indians (renowned for their pre-Aztec architecture in Yucatan), whose descendants are still to be found in various parts of Central America. He evoked them by folk-influenced rhythms and melodic turns of phrase (though without any actual quotations), often presented in a faux-naif style that parallels the murals of his slightly older contemporary Diego Rivera. Another strong musical influence was Stravinsky, to whom his debt is clear both in the Sacre-like cumulative tension of repetitive patterns in Sensemaya and in the brittle textures and wry dance character of the fantastically-scored First Little Serious Piece, reminiscent of L’histoire du soldat. This miniature is one of four items played by a chamber group from the Los Angeles Philharmonic: the first section of the light-hearted folksy octet Ocho por radio is a little scurried, but the group is excellent, and recorded with exemplary clarity, in the Homage to Lorca (written while the poet was still alive): the ‘wrong-note’ parallel lines of the cheerful first movement are a bit formulaic but it has zest, the slow movement unfurls over a hypnotic piano ostinato, and the finale is deliriously busy.

Of the three works for the full orchestra, by far the most impressive though not the best known is the suite drawn from the film La noche de los Mayas: after a lament in the middle of the first movement’s primitivism come a sparkling scherzo, a lyrical Nocturne (perhaps Revueltas’s loveliest creation) and an orgiastic finale where the percussion and brass have a field-day. The early Ventanas (‘windows’ on what, I ask?) somewhat bewilderingly alternate violent frenzy and a mystical, sinuous calm voiced by a solo oboe. Two different approaches have been experienced on disc to the now familiar Sensemaya: fast, with much extrovert excitement, as with Batiz, or deliberate and menacing, as with Mata. Salonen stresses the insistent ostinatos (chanted Indian words in Revueltas’s original setting) but takes it so slowly – making it a third as long again as Batiz – that it merely plods. Perhaps it is that though Los Angeles is not that far from Mexico, very distant culturally as well as geographically is Finland, where ritual snake-killing is not an indigenous activity.

-- Lionel Salter, Gramophone

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: **** / SOUND: ****
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/s/sny60676a.php
https://www.amazon.com/Sensemaya-Silvestre-Revueltas-Esa-Pekka-Salonen/dp/B00000I77A

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Silvestre Revueltas (December 31, 1899 – October 5, 1940) was a Mexican composer of classical music, a violinist and a conductor. Born in Santiago Papasquiaro in Durango, he studied at the National Conservatory in Mexico City, St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, and the Chicago College of Music. Revueltas wrote film music, chamber music, songs, and a number of other works. His best-known works are the suite from his film score La Noche de los Mayas and the orchestral work Sensemayá. Revueltas died in Mexico City of pneumonia (complicated by his alcoholism), at the age of 40.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvestre_Revueltas

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Esa-Pekka Salonen (born June 30, 1958 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He studied horn and composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, as well as conducting with Jorma Panula. Later, Salonen studied with the composers Franco Donatoni, Niccolò Castiglioni and Einojuhani Rautavaara. Salonen was the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 to 2009. He is currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra (since 2008), all will be music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 2020/2021 season.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esa-Pekka_Salonen
https://www.esapekkasalonen.com/

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