Paulo S Varoto

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.

The Cello Concerto no.1 was Villa-Lobos’s first major orchestral work. Filled with youthful energy and displaying an eclectic style, it is the sound of the composer finding his voice. Three decades later and with his reputation at its height, the inspired melodies and flowing style of the Fantasia sees Villa-Lobos giving free rein to his vivid imagination. Composed for the Brazilian cellist Aldo Parisot, the no less inventive and lushly scored Cello Concerto no.2 from 1953 suggests man’s solitude when facing the vastness of nature.