NUM 1150
Title: Opus Ensemble 2007
Artist: Opus Ensemble, Pedro Ribeiro, Olga Prats, Ana Bela Chaves, Alejandro Erlich Oliva
Composers: Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Fernando Lopes-Graça, António Victorino D’Almeida
OPUS ENSEMBLE 2007
Presenting world-premiere recordings of two notable works dedicated to the Opus Ensemble by Portuguese authors is the basic concept that determined the choice of repertoire on this CD.
The persistent action of dissemination of Portuguese music begun by the Opus Ensemble in 1980 had an unconditional proponent in Fernando Lopes Graça. His artistic and human relation with Olga Prats and Ana Bela Chaves predates the founding of the Opus Ensemble, which the great composer welcomed with sincere enthusiasm. In this way, preexistent ties generated new and vigorous connections.
Geórgicas was dedicated to the Opus Ensemble in 1989. The world premiere took place in Tomar (12/14/1991) and the Latin-American premiere was organized by the Wagnerian Association of Buenos Aires, with assistance from the ministerial guardian of culture of the Republic of Argentina and with the support of the Portuguese Embassy (08/25/1993). A studio videorecording of the work was made by RTP (Portuguese Television) and a live audiorecording was made by RDP (Portuguese Radio); but until now, the work was never published on CD.
De Profundis à memória de Bruno Pizzamiglio (Op. 130) by António Victorino d’Almeida was the first work dedicated to an Opus Ensemble regrouped as a quartet, after its reduction to a trio motivated by the death, in 1997, of the founding oboist of the ensemble.
Its premiere (Viana do Castelo, 09/20/2003) signaled the first performance of the Opus Ensemble with Pedro Ribeiro, who, is now a permanent member of the group.
In the program notes for that event, the composer wrote (excerpts): “Bruno Pizzamiglio left us and his place in the Opus Ensemble stayed empty and silent. But nothing can last forever – not even the absence dictated by death – when one considers such a superior concept, complex but concrete, called resurrection… De Profundis is, without a doubt, a long and agitated meditation on this strange phenomenon – at times frightening or even aberrant, in other cases, almost bearable as natural – which is the passage of someone we know, with whom we have dealt and worked, from the world, apparently far from his future resurrection”…. A single sonority clearly in the major mode, on the final beat of the final measure, defines the certainty that I have always had in the indisputable truth of that resurrection and that the Opus Ensemble would reemerge today without empty space or silence, not because the grief is past, but because time has passed.”
Haydn and Beethoven, heavy names in any repertoire, are particularly welcome here, as they constitute referential archetypes worthy of special admiration. This is assumed publicly, on the part of the two illustrious Portuguese creators that the Opus Ensemble, with pride and gratitude, pays homage on this CD.
Finally, a warm greeting for João Almeida (Antena 2) and Fernando Rocha (NUMÉRICA), who, enthusiastically and effectively made the realization of this undertaking possible.
Alejandro Erlich Oliva
Lisbon, 2007
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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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NUM 1109
Title: Chamber Music (triple CD)Artists: various
Composer: António Victorino D’Almeida
Notes from the Author
I dedicate these three CD’s to my Father, who had the chance to listen to a few of them in his life.
I own him all of good in me- and also the unwholesome part of me I could get read of.
Meanwhile, there are many persons whose friendship and work this sample of my chamber music owns its materialization.
Obviously, I name the music players who had done it, the copyists who copied it, the technicians who recorded it and the Recorder, personally to Fernando Augusto Rocha, my dear friend and dedicated collaborator.
Without his precious help and participation, all these would still be alive only inside a drawer, keeping company to so many more…
I want to thank specially to the ex-Minister of Culture in Portugal, Dr. Manuel Maria Carrilho, who had disposable the sum that turned those handmade works computerized, and from there on- and only after that moment- it could be read and interpretated by the interpreters.
I also want to express my gratitude to this fiction character – named Coronel Bombarda…- that I strangely helped creating in a television show who repaid me in return in such a way that almost all of the recording and setting work could be done.
And not another word I shall say about this personage, for I believe everyone understands the message that I am longing to say…
Anyway, all this ends with another dedication to four real personages, to whom, at each and its own exceptional way – always at the moment I needed the most – where there in a inestimable manner for the fulfilment of this work:
To my wife, Sybil, Bárbara Guimarães, Maria do Céu Guerra and Madalena Garcia Reis.
In the account of the pieces, the selection did not relied on a particular preference – for there are many other works I would love to turn into life, away from the shadiest drawer- but yet to the circumstances of the moment, especially the dispensability of the music players, the studios and the copies…
I limited myself then to give some kind of a reasons’ glimpse that terminated each of those compositions.
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Classical & Contemporary Music 