Various Composers - El árbol de la vida: Music from Mexico (Gustavo Rivero Weber)

Information

• (01) José Pablo Moncayo - Huapango
• (02) Hebert Vázquez - El árbol de la vida
• (03) Ricardo Castro - Minuetto, Op. 23
• (04) Silvestre Revueltas - La noche de los mayas
• (08) Simone Iannarelli - El último café juntos

Pablo Garibay, guitar (2, 8)
Orquesta Juvenil Universitaria Eduardo Mata
Gustavo Rivero Weber, conductor

Date: 2019
Label: Naxos
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.573902

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Review

A disc featuring five of the most colourful scores composed in Mexico during the Twentieth century, and presented in outgoing and highly enjoyable performances. Opening with one of my favourite pieces, the folk inspired dance, Huapango, from Jose Pablo Moncayo, who died tragically young at the age of forty-six, robbing Mexico of potentially one of its finest composers. With exuberant use of percussion, it mixes subtle colours with a riot of happiness, its mood an excellent prelude to Silvestre Revueltas’s La noche de los mayas. Composed in 1939—two years before Huapango—and the year before he died at the age of forty-one, it was music for a film whose origins influenced by folk music. Using a battery of percussion, including many Mexican instruments, it has the savagery we find in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and you could well imagine the potential for a ballet. From the film score the conductor, Jose Yves Limantour, fashioned a four-movement symphonic suite, each depicting a different night in the South American world once inhabited by the Maya people, the quiet third night offering a respite before the final frenzied dance. The disc’s most recent work, completed three years ago, is Hebert Vasquez’s El arbol de la Vida (The tree of life). Scored for amplified guitar and orchestra, its mix of Spanish-style strumming and melodic invention intended to picture the roots of the tree extending into the ground, the conclusion just about as noisy as you can get. Also for guitar and orchestra, Simone Iannarelli’s El ultimo cafe juntos, verges on ‘pop’ music, while Ricardo Castro, born in 1864, proved that it all began with West European music in his brief Minuetto. The orchestra providing all the sheer virtuosity required has been created from young and highly gifted Mexican musicians who must be exceedingly proud of their achievement. The guitar soloist is Pablo Garibay, and Gustavo Rivero Weber is the conductor. Add to this eulogy a quite spectacular recording, and I beg of you to hear the disc.

-- David Denton

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Gustavo Rivero Weber studied piano at the Mexico National Conservatory, then with Jorge Bolet (Philadelphia), Ludmila Ginsburg (Odessa), and Guido Agosti (Siena). He studied conducting with Avi Ostrowski, Jan Latham-Koenig and Alun Francis. Weber founded the Orquesta Juvenil Universitaria Eduardo Mata in 2015 and, in a short time as its music director, has taken the ensemble to be one of the best orchestras in Mexico. The orchestra gained international recognition after a very successful Italian tour where they played at Meraner Musikwochen and the Emilia Romagna Festival, among others.
https://www.naxos.com/person/Gustavo_Rivero_Weber/293602.htm

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