Paulo Andrez

In his debut album, "Iberian Impressions", Portuguese pianist Paulo Oliveira navigates a journey through Iberian piano music, showcasing the works of Spanish and Portuguese composers who have had a profound impact on his musical life.

BIS has done it again! If you’ve been collecting any of the marvelous unknown composers that this label has been advocating over the years, including Tubin, Tveitt, Klami, or (from this source) Guarnieri, then you’re going to love this fabulous new disc of music by Brazilian composer Francisco Mignone (1897-1986). He’s best known today for his shorter piano pieces, which appear on numerous Latin American keyboard music collections–but there’s much more to him than that. The son of Italian immigrants, Mignone’s music sounds like an Afro-Brazilian homage to Respighi, Puccini, and Stravinsky–but as happens so often in these cases, whatever he may lack in sheer originality he more than makes up for in melodic spontaneity and in finding a mix of ingredients that is his alone. This disc, which shows the work of a superb craftsman and an orchestrator every bit on the level of the three composers just mentioned, only whets the appetite for more–much more.

Continuing its excellent series of Guarnieri Symphonies, the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra under John Neschling presents another program of marvelous music that deserves the widest possible exposure outside of its native Brazil. Guarnieri's First Symphony was composed in 1944 and dedicated to Serge Koussevitsky. It's as fine an example of American (in the widest sense) neo-classicism as anything by Copland, Harris, or Piston, and it's worth pointing out that this confidently mature work actually precedes much of those composers' symphonic output, as it does, say, Tippett's, whose rhythmic complexity and contrapuntal business it in some ways resembles. The central slow movement, marked "Profundo", is particularly well sustained and supports the composer's claim to be regarded a major 20th century symphonist.

Camargo Guarnieri’s catalogue of works represents a legacy of incalculable worth for Brazilian culture, as has his influence as a teacher on several generations of younger composers. His association with the poet and musicologist Mario de Andrade led to the birth of the Brazilian Nationalist School and the ideals of using traditional Brazilian music in classical forms. The series of seven Choros and the Seresta for Piano and Orchestra represent Guarnieri’s personal approach to the concerto form, with striking contrasts between potent rhythm and dense, emotionally charged soundscapes and melodies full of Brazilian inspiration.

The vast majority of Brazilian-born pianist Arnaldo Cohen's discography is devoted to the music of Franz Liszt. There is good reason for this; his technique and approach to the instrument seem especially suited for the demands Liszt makes of pianists, from extreme subtlety and introspection to the bravura, ostentatious displays of power and virtuosity. Cohen delivers all of this with remarkable clarity.

Even though instrumental choro has been jazz-influenced for decades, reedsman Moura really falls somewhere between choro and jazz-samba. The jazz elements are very strong, the local ingredients more varied and more Afro-Brazilian than usual, and he is fond of a big-band sound and a somewhat staid avant-gardism, both of which are foreign to the mainstream idiom. But the spirit and the underlying sound are choro rather than anything else, even if they do stretch the boundaries. And Moura is a fine player with a fine group.