NUM 1147

Title: Música Portuguesa para Piano, Vol. 2

Artist: Nancy Lee Harper

Composers: Eurico Carrapatoso, Filipe Pires, Sara Carvalho, Tomás Henriques, Amílcar Vasques Dias, Óscar de Vasconcelos, Cândido Lima

Cinco viñetas para piano emocionado  (Agosto, 1998)– Eurico Carrapatoso

This work was written in August 1998, following the invitation addressed to me by Profª Doutora Nancy Lee-Harper. The work is dedicated to her and to the found ot inspiration and poetry from the youth of F. García Lorca (1910-1920). On the other hand, this work comments on Umagregado, a piece that I wrote in 1990, and Cinco canciones para piano y voz emocionada  from 1998 on the poetry of that Spanish poet.

a distant mirror (2003) was written at the request of the pianist Marcel Worms to be inserted into his project “New Blues for piano” – a project in progress. He was curious to know what the Blues, meant for the contemporary composer either with a classical background or classically educated, and his idea was that I should write a piece that, in some way, was influenced by Blues and the Portuguese Music. My choice was Fado… (I may have started that way but, as usual, the piece took a life of its own)

The influence appears over all in the tone of moan, so proper of “Fado”.  The bred atmosphere breathes of many colours influenced by the jazz, that if go alternating and overlapping to the melodic lines, and goes forming the different layers of the piece.

The mirror of the title reflects sounds, gestures, colours and movements.

Drei Bagatellen are three piano pieces composed in Lisbon when the composer was still a student at the National Conservatory. The first and third pieces date from 1949, while the middle piece was composed in 1952.The set is dedicated to the Portuguese pianist, Fernando Laires.

The first piece is clearly influenced by the music of Paul Hindemith and is in a majestic 8/4 meter. Its chordal and repetitive nature serves as a kind of introduction to the set. The second piece presents a chromatic four-chord ostinato, over which a delicate melody cleverly twists and turns, winding down to a very soft ending. The third piece continues the idea of repeated notes, this time in an insistent manner, typical of a toccata. The entire set keeps the interest both musically and pianistically. In the words of the composer; “In spite of an enlarged tonal ground, present in all three pieces, they are differently featured and introduce the first step towards a free atonality.”

Silence for solo piano is a contemplative work, which is written upon a network of sound/silence units that build up a dialog where the simplicity of sonic events is balanced by their strong meaning.

This work is to be listened to with an utmost concentration on the essence of the sound – its colour, brilliance, inner presence and its contrast/relationship with silence.

There are three different dimensions within this piece: chords (or blocks of vertically arranged sounds of varying duration and dynamics), silences and the (originally) gentle high pitch notes that always appear in 3-unit groups. These high pitch notes are separate in their nature and objective and follow their own time frame, especially in the first section of the piece.

The piece has a simple ABA type form where section A presents a group of 12 chords that make up the piece, introducing also the distant high pitch motive that is meant to belong to a different soundscape. Section B has a transitional character. It replays the 12 original chords but in a transformed way.  These chords are organized in four phrases, with each phrase containing three chords thus echoing and evoking the way that the high pitch motive was presented in the first section – with four instances of the same three-unit note.

Section C brings together the chords and the high pitch motive but with their role inverted. The high pitch motive has now a more integrated function and presents a stronger character and clearer direction stressed by its dynamics – a gradual and powerful crescendo supporting a chromatic ascent. The chords keep having contrasting dynamics just like in the first section but with a secondary role.  The piece ends with a return to the final chord of section A with the left hand of the piano completing the last pitch of the chromatic ascent.

Quatro peças dodecafónicas para piano (1964)

The first written sounds organised according to the 12-tone row (of whose principles the composer heard speak, in sparse news, and one time only, in a harmony and counterpoint lesson, in Braga, by the composer Victor Macedo Pinto) are the sounds of Quatro peças dodecafónicas (written in three or four days), each one of which constructed on independent row of 12 tones. The result was, at first, a conventional phrase, atonal, lyric, on variations of an initial phrase: the piece Melodia. In Interlúdio I it is curious the presence of the ostinati or Viennese pedals around which was constructed sonorities from different rows and where the harmony creates some atmosphere. It is a mixture of the internal and diaphanous facet of Debussy and the miniatures of Berg, of Schoenberg, or of Webern (whom the composer did not know at that time) with the free intervallic treatment of the chromatic scale oranized in a series (successions) of 12 tones. In Interlúdio II, the same principle is used, with another dodecaphonic row, where, after a short prelude, arpeggiated aggregates succeed in varying densities towards a single sound. The Ostinato, although with a base in independent rows within itself, is similar, rhythmically, to Bartók or to Stravinsky, mas clearly individualised.  In the Interlúdios I and II sonorities, more “Impressionistic” from the French serial school than the spots and tensions of Expressionism from the Viennese school, are visible: finally, close simultaneous “flashes” from Debussyian and Boulezian sonorities.

Cândido Lima (De Origens e segredos da música portuguesa contemporânea-Música em som e imagem-Ed.Politema-I.P.P.)

Óscar da Silva’s Fantasia is a late work, in free-form, and full of chromaticism. Dedicated to his friend, the Portuguese pianist Fernando Laires, this work comprises several sections. Still unpublished, the work shows the grandeur of virtuosity and the expressiveness of romanticism.

Canção was written at the request of Prof. Gilberta Paiva of the National Conservatory in Lisbon. Although an easy piece composed for the 4th grade exams, its charms are enduring in the simplicity and lyricism given to its name – song.

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