NUM 1145

Title: Fernando Lopes-Graça -In Memoriam Béla-Bartók, Op. 126

Artist: Antonio Rosado

Composer: Fernando Lopes-Graça

Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906-1994)

In Memoriam Béla Bartók: 8 Progressive Suites for Piano

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Of the great pianistic cycles of Fernando Lopes-Graça, (6 Sonatas; Glosas; 24 Preludes; Travels in My Land; Hour after Hour, Year after Year; Festive and Funeral Musics; Rustic Portuguese Melodies; Cosmorame; etc.), In Memoriam Béla Bartók: 8 Progressive Suites for Piano, LG 140 (LG: from the catalog of the composer’s estate developed by Teresa Cascudo and published by the Museum of Portuguese Music, in Cascais) remains, paradoxically, one of the most important and one of the least performed and recorded.

Lopes-Graça gave the premiere performance of suites I, II, V and VI between 1963 and 1964, and Olga Prats, the dean of the master’s great interpreters, did the same in 1971 and 1976 for numbers IV, VII, and VIII, recording the latter, in what was at that time – and has remained until the current moment – the only commercial recording available on the market.  Even so, the fragmentation of the premiere of the Suites is not so surprising, since the composition of its component works extended from 1960 to 1975. The first attempt at a complete presentation was made by the Municipal Council of Matosinhos (an institution very connected to Lopes-Graça since the 1980’s; patron of the complete recording of the 6 Sonatas, as well as the current CD), which, on November 27, 1995, exactly one year after the death of the composer, brought together the pianists João Espírito Santo, Olga Prats, Miguel Borges Coelho, and Vitáli Dotsenko in the Town-hall.  Unfortunately, João Espírito Santo found himself impeded from performing the 5th Suite.  The current double CD is, therefore, 31 years after the composition of the final Suite, the world premiere of the complete version of one of the most fundamental works from its composer’s catalog.

The importance of In Memoriam for Lopes-Graça must have been significant, not only in terms of its temporal extension (1 hour and 40’), complexity and compositional richness, but also because the composer considered orchestrating some numbers; for example, appended in pencil on the first page of the manuscript of the 3rd Suite: “Orchestrate pastoral numbers from the suites for a Pastoral Suite  (or Pastoral Hours)”.  This desire was in fact begun in the 19 measures of the (undated) orchestration of Dawn (6th Suite) and Pastorale (7th Suite), both destined for an unfinished orchestral work entitled Bucolics.

The tribute to Bartók, one of the composers of reference for Lopes-Graça, if not the composer of reference, is therefore the most certain indicator of the importance which these eight suites will have assumed for him.  The progressive character of the pieces is typical of a mentality with pedagogical aims, one which sees a pedagogical, musical and even ethical model in Bartók’s Mikrokosmos.  By matching these suites to similar works by the influencing master, Lopes-Graça mirrors in a clear and unequivocal manner his own personal belief in the dialectical forces which impel Humanity in the direction of a – hopefully – better future.  As in Bartók, pedagogy and ethics, humanism and art, inextricably link themselves in the music of Lopes-Graça.

The eight suites progress, from first to last, not only in terms of pure pianistic difficulty (problems of fingerwork), but also in terms of the complexity of the written music (which, at times resorts to the use of 3 staves simultaneously) and of esthetic richness, as well as in simply temporal terms (from the 7’ of the first suite to the 20’ of the final one).  Problems of physical resistance and complex musical enigmas are added to the problems of fingerwork, issues which will only be resolved by certain interpreters, those inclined to embark on a true musical voyage.

It will be of interest, from this point of view, to observe the global form:

Total durations (partial durations written by Lopes-Graça at the end of each piece, of each suite – in the manner of Bartók):

1st Suite 7′

2nd Suite 8′

3rd Suite 12′

4th Suite 13′

5th Suite 11′

6th Suite 12′

7th Suite 14′

8th Suite 20′

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NUM 1143

Title: Preludios

Artist: António Rosado

Composers: Luís de Freitas Branco, Armando José Fernandes

It was Luís de Freitas Branco, towering figure of Portuguese music, who introduced modernism into the country.  In the first two decades of the 20th-century, he embraced the most diverse tendencies of the time, displaying an awareness à la page rare in Portugal:  before his stays in Berlin and Paris between 1910 and 1912, he had already written important works such as his 1st Sonata for violin & piano (which received the 1st prize in a composition contest presided by Viana da Mota), the post-Wagnerian symphonic poems Antero de Quental and Guerra Junqueiro, and the symbolist-tending trilogy La Mort, for voice and piano.

In 1913 the premiere of Paraísos Artificiais (Artificial Paradises from 1910) provoked a scandal in Lisbon; in that year, Luís de Freitas Branco wrote one of the most daring works of his time, Vathek. These two symphonic poems brought aspects of the avant-garde to Portuguese music:  a pre-expressionist impressionism in Paradises; in Vathek, a true window is opened to the multiplicity of modernism, including an example of atonal micropolyphony which prefigures the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Such daring extends to other works from the same period:  the two atonal songs on poems of Mallarmé; the impressionist Preludes for piano and the String Quartet – pieces which may today be seen as a musical counterpoint to the modernism of Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Sá Carneiro, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and Almada Negreiros.

Beginning in the decade of the 1920’s, Luís de Freitas Branco turned towards a new diatonicism and a unique type of neoclassicism – one inspired by Beethoven – already announced in the Concerto for violin (1916).  With his four symphonies, written between 1924 and 1952, Freitas Branco consolidated a Portuguese symphonic style, which had until then, only been sporadic. Use of the Portuguese language is an important contribution of his abundant vocal production, where Camões and Antero de Quental may be seen as marked exponents of his profound Humanism. The Madrigais Camonianos for a cappella choir (1930-1949) are an original evocation of the very rich Iberian polyphonic tradition; and the sonnets of Antero for voice and piano, namely the cycle «A Ideia» (“The Idea”, 1943), must be included among the supreme creations of Portuguese music of the first half of the 20th-century.

The activity of Luís de Freitas Branco was multifaceted:  important pedagogue (Joly Braga Santos was his close disciple); critic; musicologist; essayist; lecturer at conferences. As an author he wrote:  the first treaty of musical sciences published in Latin countries (1922); works about the technique and history of music; studies about great figures in the art of sounds and about Portuguese music.

Anticipated by Mirages, which Luís Freitas Branco composed in 1911, the famous Preludes dedicated to to Viana da Mota are an important reflection of the impressionist aesthetic in Portugal. Extrapolating the harmonic sensuality of the Romantics, these 10 pieces explore new coloristic coordinates for the instrument, integrating acquisitions associated with Debussy such as the whole tone scale, chordal prolongation, non-tertian harmony, chordal planing (parallel movement) and the importance of resonance.  Although some of the preludes date from 1914, the entire cycle was concluded and received its premiere in Lisbon in the summer of 1918, performed by its dedicatee.

The whole tone scale emerges directly in the atmospheric 1st Prelude (Moderate), over arpeggios of 9th-chords. The 2nd (Animated), in an energetic and dancing ternary meter, explores chords of the added sixth.  No. 3, an ABABA form, alternates a pentatonic character, with harmonies built on fifths (A) and the whole tone scale (B). A modal flavor and fan-like writing mark the meditative  4th Prelude (Moderate), while the 5th (Lively), explores turbulent sixteenth-notes in a moto perpetuo also inhabited by the whole tone scale. Particularly contemplative, the Sixth Prelude (Moderately animated) is an ABA form, with practically atonal harmonies emerging in its B section to provide contrast to the liquid parallel fourths and the static perfect fifths of its A section.  The 7th Prelude (Very moderate) explores languorous chords through prolongation, over an arching melody which attempts to take flight. In No. 8 (Very animated), incessant sextuplets of sixteenth-notes serve as the basis of a whole tone fanfare which gathers melodic élan, only calming itself in a slow coda, whose final two measures are an ironic and clowning negation. The melody in parallel fourths of the 9th Prelude (Moderate, not slow) planes over sensual arpeggios of added sixth and ninth chords, contrasting with the clean and fiery contours of the two brief B sections, in an ABABA form. The nimble 10th Prelude (Lively) epitomizes the coordinates of the cycle, with cells proliferating around an eighth-note  moto perpetuo.

The Sonatina represents a more neoclassic inclination, although very different form the Beethovenesque four symphonies, influenced probably by Ravel’s Sonatine of 1903.  The first movement was published in the magazine A Semana Musical (The Musical Week) in 1923, with the title, Peça para Crianças (Piece for Children). The manuscript, undated, has “Piece  for João” as its epigraph (his son was born on January 10th of the previous year). The version as Sonatina in three movements was published by Sassetti and neither manuscript nor published edition are dated.

Although João de Freitas Branco attributes 1930 as the the date of the Sonatina, a journal clipping dated “10/14/1923” (in Luís de Freitas Branco’s hand) is mentioned in the more recent edition of Sassetti:  “Freitas Branco, our illustrious music critic, gives us, in a delicious “Sonatina” for piano, in three movements, the first Portuguese example of the sober style which marks the post-Debussy reaction.  The author took advantage of the occasion to write, with his unique skill, using the major refinements of modernism including polytonality and atonality [!], a most simple work, a true Sonatina for children, as much in style as in technique.  It represents, in our opinion, the resolution of one of the most difficult and interesting problems of modern art, in the ingenuous guise of a piece for the third year of the Conservatory.” [journal and author not identified].

According to the dating of this journal clipping, the Sonatina will most probably have been complete in 1922 or in the first half of 1923.  The date of the premiere is indicated by João de Freitas Branco as 1930, interpreted by Maria Capucho, in Lisbon.

In this, the most miniature of works by the composer, we find a foreshadowing of the new modal orientation already in the first movement.  More “geometric”,  this orientation  will be affirmed in the 2nd Sonata for violin. The Allegretto finale, in Rondo form, is perhaps the most Scarlattian  moment in the music of Luís de Freitas Branco.

Written in 1940 and dedicated to the pianist Isabel Manso, these Four Preludes form a group completely different from the 10 Preludes dedicated to Viana da Mota.  Stylistically, they emerge as a rare object within Freitas Branco’s production from the years 1930-40:  an almost expressionist incursion in an elliptical and disturbing universe.

The premiere took place in 1940, by the dedicatee .  Eighteen years later, a recital by the same pianist was mentioned by Nuno Barreiros:  “The author once told us that the “Four Preludes” – short, synthetic, in a concentrated  language – represent, within his work, a final resurrection of impressionism, the erasure of the last stains of that aesthetic, which so strongly marked the composer of “Artificial Paradises”. We experience such an impression now, through the fitting interpretation of Isabel Manso (…)”  (unidentified publication, 11/24/1958).

The definition “a final resurrection of impressionism, the erasure of the last stains of that aesthetic” demands that we parse well the word “erase”.  Impressionist traces are to be found in the 3rd prelude, inhabited by parallel fourths; in the remaining parts the parallel motion is of augmented 4ths and superpositions of 2nds – a deformed impressionism, with harmonies nearer to the Second Viennese School.

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NUM 1124

Title: Fernando Lopes-Graça Integral das Sonatas Para Piano

Artist: António Rosado

Composer: Fernando Lopes-Graça

Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906-1994)

The six Piano Sonatas

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From the seven sonatas of Bomtempo to the six of Lopes-Graça, no other Portuguese composer has written a cycle of such important works for the piano in this classical form. Even after Lopes-Graça, the only composer closer to the present time who dared to create a similar cycle, is António Victorino D’Almeida (born in 1940, also a pianist), who until now (2004) has already completed seven sonatas. This scarcity, nevertheless, comes as no surprise, since it includes – except for Prokofiev – the whole of the musical twentieth century, either because of the complete rejection of classical forms by many composers, or of their appropriation by other more subtle intentions (the operas Wozzeck, by Alban Berg or The Turn of the Screw, by Benjamin Britten…) or, in short, of the substitution of these by balletic, jazzistic, or neoclassical forms and structures of a baroquian aspect, these last metioned having become popular in the first half of the century as they recuperated preceding forms and structures prior to the Beethovenian sonata, which genre reached its highest peak up until our time (the opposite of a Prokofiev, who wrote five concerts and nine sonatas for piano and seven symphonies). The only collection of importance with regard to the use of classical forms, in Lopes-Graça’s own catalogue, consists in just this collection of six works.

But if it is still early to evaluate the contribution of Victorino D’Almeida concerning the history of the genre, the same cannot be said of Lopes-Graça. All six Sonatas have been available for some years in digital form, and in two of these cases, (the Fifth and Sixth Sonatas) interpreted by Olga Prats and Nella Maissa, to whom these works were dedicated, make of these recordings true historical moments (the other recordings are of Maria da Graça Amado da Cunha and Miguel Henriques).

With the appearance of this double CD of António Rosado, which includes the complete cycle, one witnesses another historical moment which completely justifies the attention of the musicologists in one of the most important moments of the piano works of Lopes-Graça. A reading in their totality of the Sonatas by one sole interpreter with sufficient emotional distance both from the author as well as from the works (which permits a certain analytic interpretative objectivity), with the help of modern and excellent recording conditions (which did not always happen in the past) and master of a powerful technique at the service of a very personal musicality, will certainly shed new light on the pieces and their author.

The piano was for Lopes-Graça, as it was for many others before him, a vehicle of communion with a musical reality, a virtual diary, a source of experimentation (Ao Fio dos Anos e das Horas – Through the Years and the Hours – for example, subtitled “cadernos de um compositor” – a composer’s notebooks – is a real diary, “written” on the keyboard…). Constituted by dozens of works, which are comprised of hundreds of small pieces, this important pianistic “corpus” begins at the age of twenty-one with Variations on a Popular Portuguese Theme, written in 1927, his Opus I, and ends with the Tocata, Andante, and Fugato of 1991, not only his last piece for piano but also the penultimate one of all the works of his catalogue (Lopes-Graça composes a small piece for mixed choir “a capella”, in 1992, and then there is silence).

The six Sonatas include a similar period to that of the rest of his pianistic output, for they extend from 1934, (the composer was only twenty-eight years old) until 1981, when Lopes-Graça had already attained the advanced age of seventy-five, and, therefore, of themselves, can serve as landmarks of the technical and stylistic evolution of their author. They reveal, besides, the musical landmark of excellence, in the waters in which Lopes-Graça moved; in order to prove this statement, let us take a look at the dedications: from an illustrious musicologist (Macário Santiago Kastner), and an enlightened guide, and equally illustrious (D. Elisa de Sousa Pedroso) to the foreign pianists of renown (Hélène Boschi and Georges Bernand) and the Portuguese artists of the finest calibre (Olga Prats and Nella Maissa). If we again consider the list of the first interpreters, some of which are actual persons to whom the works were dedicated, this is no less significant: Helena Moreira de Sá e Costa, Hélène Boschi, Georges Bernand, Olga Prats and Nella Maissa, demonstrating the growing habit of Lopes-Graça to dedicate specific works to specific interpreters, who will later make known the work at the first hearing and, at times, even in a discographic register.

It is important to note that, notwithstanding the long period of time that they span and the stylistic evolutions that they denote, the six Sonatas are indubitably, the work of the same artist, whose voice was always and immediately distinguishable. The diverse influences that he experienced during the course of his life, some of which are still to be studied and to be discovered (not only those of Bartók, Stravinsky or Falla, but also those of Ravel, Janácék and Szymanowsky and, in the classical field, those of Bach, Beethoven and Chopin), only contributed so that the “style” of Lopes-Graça became unmistakable and unique. All six Sonatas show, however, within their unity, a notable diversity of musical gestures and textures, of the number and style of the movements, and also the proteiform musical structures, that make them very interesting as the object of an intellectual study, although Lopes-Graça never used a specific technique unless behind it there came, as a cause and not as a consequence, a certain and imperative musical intention.

The already-mentioned diversity is accompanied by an evident stylistic and technical evolution, that is also reflected in the scope of the work. If the First and the Second Sonatas (composed in 1934 and 1939 respectively, to initiate a phase of preoccupation with traditional but constructivistic forms and genres: the symphony, the concerto and the sonata) reveal, here and there, a certain neoclassical facet (namely the Second, the only one to have a key signature that puts it unequivocally in D Major, being significant, the dedication to Macário Santiago Kastner, the musicologist specialized in ancient piano music) and Iberiam folk music, there already exists between them a clear difference in time, no doubt, justified by an increasing conceptual complexity. We pass from some scarce 10’ to 16’, although the neo-baroquian format in three movements, fast-slow-fast is maintained.

The turning point is attained, unequivocally, in the Third Sonata, written in a series of kaleidoscopic movements – played without interruption – and which last more than twenty minutes. With this Third Sonata, the most “Bartókian” of all, the full maturity of Lopes-Graça is affirmed from the very first measures through a primeval and implacable energy, that culminates in the jubilant fugue almost at the end and closes in 1952, the first glorious chapter in the series, being significantly, important, that with it, Lopes-Graça won, in the same year, the Composition Prize of the Círculo de Cultura Musical. The decade of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties is also the most productive epoch of the pianistic output of the composer: he wrote one hundred and fifty more works, single or in cycles.

The Fourth Sonata (1961) which is approximately the same length as the Second, represents, after a fashion, the doubts and consequent experiments which established in the composer a transition to the sixties, at the same time that a certain formal “decline” (namely when compared to the resounding Third) with its four “symphonic” movements: fast-slow-fast-fast, that, notwithstanding, will return to shape the last works of the cycle. It is well known that Lopes-Graça did not appreciate the Fourth Sonata, until he heard, at the end of his life, an interpretation at a concert given by Miguel Henriques. At that time, he appears to have altered  his opinion with regard to this work, which is, according to my point of view, considering its ambiguous and enigmatic history, one of the most interesting, already pointing to the final sonatas, as though he were rehearsing for them. His apogee will come only after the evanescent Fourth Sonata, although sixteen years still had to transpire before the next work of the cycle saw the light of day.

The Fifth and Sixth Sonatas (1977 and 1981) represent and culminate in yet another creative phase, characterized by the maturity and crystallization of the creative processes. The structure of the works becomes dramatically complex, the harmonic ambiguity is greater than ever and the pianistic writing tends toward a density approaching a Schoenberg or a Szymanowsky, with few or no evident signs of the neoclassicism of the first works, or of Iberian folklore, always present until the sixties. An important and stylistic influence is especially accentuated, which was already heard in the Third Sonata: that of the late music of Beethoven. This becomes evident in the Fifth Sonata by the extraordinary series of nineteen small movements played in succession (again the dizzy kaleidoscopic aspect of the form, already mentioned in the commentary of the Third Sonata, in a wide structure of two parts, that recollects the form of the last Quartets of the master of Bonn, and in the Sixth Sonata, the last (and the longest of all also, lasting 25’) in the form of a surprising citation of thematic material – and the respective tonal relation (alternating between the two polar notes, Do and Mi) – of the first movement of the Waldstein Sonata in the form of four movements, with two of them played “attacca” (all of a sudden), and again by the constant transferences of thematic material from one movement to another.

Such a clear allusion to another composer already happened before, at the end of the First Sonata, which copies, enhancing his harmonic avant gardism, the almost atonal “presto” of  Chopin’s Sonata in B minor (another of the elect). If, by this aspect, we analyse the cycle of the six Sonatas of Lopes-Graça, we can almost speak of a dialectical path, which starts with a sombre atmosphere (a tie to death in the already cited work of Chopin is evident) to culminate in the olympian humanism of the last Beethoven. Is it also a reaction based on the evolution of Portuguese politics of this century, from fascism beginning in 1926, to democracy in 1974? Knowing Graça, it seems very possible to me and even an hypothesis to consider in the interpretation of these odd and fascinating works. The general impression aims constantly at the future since the music of Lopes-Graça is never completely innocent or playful, and still less, frivolous. There lies its permanent restlessness, even in moments of greater jubilation.

Considering all that has been said, it becomes evident that the Sonatas demand an interpreter who approaches them in their totality with the utmost technique, musicality and maturity. Lopes-Graça, as Bartók before him, knew how to write music that is not difficult (primarily for children) when he so wished, but his attitude before art and life finds parallels in the attitudes of Bartók and Beethoven, perhaps the composers he most admired and emulated, being demanding of themselves and therefore also being demanding of others, and of a society which saw his music being born. In this particular and contrary to many other works of the composer, deliberately simple and direct (as in the harmonizations of popular songs or in the already cited didactic music), the six Sonatas and, in particular, the last two, represent the most evident facet of an art, at times austere and difficult, that does not reveal its secrets without a certain effort, inseparable from any humam demands in search of the Grail that is an ever elusive Beauty.

But, also, such as in the most contrary and enthusiastic dancing crowds, in the hopes of fleeting and immediate pleasure (and without improper comparisons that would make Graça himself apostrophize me vehemently!) many are the spiritual rewards that await those who attain, on the steep path, the Light.

© Sérgio Azevedo, 2004

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NUM 1099

Title: Obras Para Piano

Artist: Luis Pipa – piano

Composer: Luis Costa

Luiz Costa (1879 – 1960)

It’s difficult to talk about Luiz Costa focussing separately on one another aspect of this activities as a man and a musician – pianist, pedagogue and composer.

Oporto gained the privelege of having in it’s musical midst this graet national figure.

Luiz Costa was born in Monte Fralães, a parish of the Minho in the municipality of Barcelos, on 25 of September, 1879 (died on 7 of January, 1960). He began his piano studies with is mather, continuing them in Oporto with Bernardo Valentim Moreira de Sá, a man of  immense culture. With the end of these first studies, and to pursue a higher artistic level, he went to Germany in 1905, where stayed for two years, working in Berlim and Munich with masters Ferruccio Busoni, Conrad Ansorge, Bernard Stavenhagen and Vianna da Motta, these three last ones, pupils of Liszt.

On the return to Portugal, he was quickly acknowledged his great mastery on the keybord. The technic and performative thought are perfect, qualities that the critics always praised and respected.

He performed in concerts in his country and abroad, as a soloist, in chamber music and orchestral music. One should point out his collaboration with the Zimmer, Chaumont and Rose quartets, in Portugal and, with cellist Guilhermina Suggia, in London and Vigo. It is also mentionable, on his work as a divulger of the European music repertoire, his interpretation of Tchaikovsky first piano concert in its premiere in Portugal, at Teatro S. Luís, under the direction of Pedro Blanch.

Maried to the pianist Leonilda Moreira de Sá, daughter of his master Bernardo Valentim M. Sá, both indulged in total dedication to the carrier of pedagogues, founding a school which, still today, proves to be fruitful, and from which there have emerged remarkable musicians, of which Oporto and the country are very proud.

His daughters, Helena and Madalena de Sá e Costa, accredited concert performers, have, in continuation to the pedagogic work of their parents, contributed also in a decisive way to the divulgation and instruction of piano and cello music.

The family and artistic environments that surrounded Luiz Costa through his life were necessary condiments to the creative inspiration of a great musician. At home and in concert halls, all family contributed to the divulgation of works, some unknown or, up until then, barely known. With them other personalities from other artistic expressions have had social intimacy. If on the one hand Luiz Costa set to music poems by his friend António Correia de Oliveira, on the other hand Luiz Costa gained immortalisation on the canvas of António Carneiro and on the sculpture of Teixeira Lopes.

Through his house in Oporto passed great national and foreign musicians. This was due, in part, to the fact that Luiz Costa had been on the front line of “Orpheon Portuense” for 36 years, replacing his father-in-law, and founder, after his death in 1924.

Allowing continuity to the “frantic” activity of this concerto promoting society, Luiz Costa brought to Portugal Maurice Ravel who performed only in Oporto.

As director of this society he allowed the city of Oporto to enjoy the music of such figures as Aldo Ciccolini, Alexander Uninsky, Arthur Rubinstein, Cláudio Arrau, Edwin Ficher, Géza Anda, Jörg Demus, Karl Böhm, Karl Engel, Magda Tagliaferro, Moura Limpany, Wanda Landowska, Wilhelm Backhaus, Wilhem Kempff, Yehudi Menuhin, among others.

As a  pedagogue Luiz Costa was regarded by his students as the master. He always knew how to respect the personality and individuality of each student, acting in a way that would promote their projection and aesthetic sense, in the perspective of their global education as musicians. The empathy between teacher and students was such that after his death the former pupils gathered efforts to create the contest “Prémio Nacional de Piano Luiz Costa”

Luiz Costa took part in the first group of teachers of the Oporto Music Conservatoire, since its foundation in 1917, of which he would become Director. This activity was eventually suspended for some years because of his choice of teaching at home. When he returned to the Conservatoire he kept his position has a teacher of the Superior Course until the legal limit of age. His functions as a teacher were not restricted to the work carried out in the classroom, but associated many times to those of a concert  performer, through concerts that he would himself promote and execute with a didactic-pedagogic intention. Involved in this enthusiasm, he eventually refused an invitation to teach at the College of Music of Cincinnati, in the United States of America.

Admirer of the music of composers of his time, Luiz Costa also gave special meaning to the music of Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Schubert and Beethoven. To this last composer he dedicated annual concerts by the occasion of the anniversaries of his birth and death.

As a critic Luiz Costa collaborated in the magazines “Arte Musical”, “in Memoriam” to Vianna da Motta under the title “The Personality of Vianna da Motta”, and also wrote programme notes.

His activity as a composer was diversified, but it was to the piano that he gave himself almost entirely.

One can only start to better understand better some of his piano works when one has been in the land were he was born on or in the ambience of the north of Portugal that was so familiar to him, which influence is noticed on the titles and sonorities. The rural atmospheres, the hills, the mist, the waters, the fountains are present in many pieces in an intimist way and described with profound lirism and nostalgic flavour. In is own way, as a sound painter of the environments of his land, Luiz Costa was also a patriot.

With a career that embraces the former streams of aesthetics and those of his time, Luiz Costa suffered influences of romanticism, of French impressionism, to end up on the neoclassicism of the first half of the 20th century.

The work of Luiz Costa, in resemblance to what happens with other prominent Portuguese composers, is not well known. The majority of his compositions is kept, in the manuscript form, in the possession of his family. However, recently there has been an increasing tendency to the recovery of the musical patrimony of this composer through recordings and the publication of some of his works.

To Luiz Costa was acknowledged  the merit of a personality of national influence, either in life or posthumously, through homages that go from decorations to the attribution of his name to public spaces.

The present recording begins with the three pieces op.1 “Ao pé da Azenha”, “Canção do Berço” and “Conto de Fadas”, dedicated respectively to his brothers, his wife and his parents, edited in Berlin, Germany, in 1913. “A Fiandeira” op.2, written in 1903, was later edited in Spain. The cicle “Poemas do Monte” op.3, dedicated to Vianna da Motta and edited by Valentim de Carvalho includes the pieces “Pelos Montes Fora”, “Murmúrios das Fontes”, “Ecos dos Vales” and Campanários” and was performed for the first time by the composer in 1925. The “Preludes” op.9, with dedication to poet António Correia de Oliveira and written in the decades of 1930 and 1940, were recently edited by Musicoteca under the patronage of the Portuguese Ministry of Culture. The Piano Sonata, written in 1940, is still kept in manuscript and pianist Luís Pipa performed it in the first audition, on October 1999, in the city of Braga. One particularity of this sonata is the composer having omitted de dynamic suggestions  (Luiz Costa never considered it ready), which ends up allowing performers a more personal interpretation.

José Manuel Freitas

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