NUM 1133
Title: Jorge Peixinho – Música Para Piano
Artist: Miguel Borges Coelho
Composer: Jorge Peixinho
Miguel Borges Coelho was born in Oporto in 1971. He started his piano studies with Amélia Vilar and proceeded his studies in the Conservatory of Music of Oporto with Isabel Rocha, in whose class he graduated. During this period, he was awarded several prizes at national piano competitions.
As a scholar from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation he attended the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Freiburg im Breisgau with Vitalij Margulis (1990-93) and, in the following three years, the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia, with Dmitri Bashkirov and Galina Egyazarova.
He was awarded the 2nd Prize and the Prize for the best interpretation of contemporary music in the XIV Oporto International Music Competition in October 1997. In 1998, he received the Revelation Prize Ribeiro da Fonte from the Portuguese Ministry of Culture. He has played in some of the most important Portuguese theatres and concert halls, namely, in the opening recitals of the Campo Alegre Theatre and the Concert Hall of the Serralves Foundation. He has also played in numerous international music festivals, such as the Sintra Music Festival, the Póvoa do Varzim Music Festival, Festa da Música in Lisbon, Les Folles Journées in Nantes (France), the Ayamonte International Music Festival and the Encontre Internacional de Compositors de Las Islas Baleares (Spain).
As a soloist, he performed with the Oporto National Orchestra (namely in its opening concert as a symphony orchestra), the APROARTE Orchestra, the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, the Madeira Classical Orchestra, the Regional Orchestra Filarmonia das Beiras, the Gulbenkian Orchestra, and the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra.
He gave the world première performance of pieces by Fernando Lopes Graça and João Pedro Oliveira.
He teaches piano at the School of Music and Performing Arts of Oporto (ESMAE) and at the High School of Music of the Basque Country Musikene.
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NUM 1126
Title: Remix Ensemble Vol. I
Artists: Remix Ensemble
Composers: Brice Pauset, Miguel Azguime, Nuno Côrte-Real, Jorge Peixinho, James Dillon, Johannes-Maria Staud, Emmanuel Nunes
THE REMIX ENSEMBLE
An essential structure of the Casa da Música, the Remix Ensemble has already presented for the first time, almost twenty new works. From the beginning of 2000, under the direction of the titular conductor, Stefan Asbury, the eclecticism of his repertoire extends itself into incursions into music for the theatre and for films, dance, and jazz, together with the promotion of numerous work-shops with composers such as Mark-Anthony Turnage, James Dillon, Brice Pauset, Magnus Lindberg, Emmanuel Nunes and António Pinho Vargas. Until the present time, among the conductors invited to conduct the Remix Ensemble, are Ilan Volkov, Anton Lukoszevieze, Brad Cohen, Miquel Bernat, Michael Zilm, Sarah Ioannides, Kasper de Roo, Pierre-André Valade, Stuart Stratford, Rolf Gupta, Peter Rundel, Jonathan Stockhammer, Peter Bergamin, Jurjen Hempel, Franck Ollu and Yoishi Sugiyama among others. On the international level the Remix Ensemble appeared in May 2001 in the “Ensems – XXIII International Festival of Contemporary Music of Valencia”, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, United Kingdom, 2003 edition and in 2004, in Barcelona, “La Pedrera”, in the sphere of an official exposition on Portuguese modernism in which Emmanuel Nunes interpreted music for the Catalan public. 2004 and 2005 will bring diverse world premieres, among which are included the first operas of Emmanuel Nunes and James Dillon (this last one a co-production in the field of Réseau Varèse) and various works of composers such as Rebecca Saunders, Iris ter Schiphorst, Frédéric Durieux, António Pinho Vargas, Toshio Hosokawa, Johannes-Maria Staud and Olga Neuwirth, among others.
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NUM 1102
Title: Ana Madalena Moreira – Soprano | Lcjan Luc – PianoArtists: Ana Madalena Moreira & Lcjan Luc
Composer: Croner de Vasconcellos
Son of the violinist Alexandre Bettencourt and pianist and teacher Laura Croner, and grandson of clarinettist Rafael José Croner, composer Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos initially attended the Lisbon Faculty of Arts. A student of the National Conservatory since 1927, he eventually decided to exclusively follow a musical career. Alexandre Rey Colaço, António Eduardo da Costa Ferreira and Luís de Freitas Branco were some of his teachers. He also worked with conductor and composer Francisco de Lacerda. With a scholarship granted by the National Education Junta, he attended, in Paris the École Normale de Musique, courses directed by Paul Dukas, Nadia Boulanger, Igor Stravinsky and Alfred Cortot. When he returned to Portugal in 1938, he became responsible for the subject of Music History at the Music Amateurs Academy. A year later he performed at a concert with singer Arminda Correia and achieved recognition for his recitals in Paris, London and Brussels. After 1939, he became a teacher of Composition, Singing and Music History at Lisbon’s National Conservatory. Already in the 1960s he also participated as a teacher in the Estoril Summer Courses. Although his work is not all that vast, the composer left a considerable number of singing pieces, many of which composed from texts of classic Portuguese poets. As far as chamber music is concerned, one should particularly mention the piano repertoire and the arrangements for pieces by Carlos Seixas. Croner de Vasconcellos also explored symphonic music, namely by composing pieces for the National Information Secretariat during the 1940s and the 1950s. He died in Lisboa in 1974.
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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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Classical & Contemporary Music 