Santoro

Jean-Marie Leclair’s fourth and final book of sonatas for solo violin and continuo was published in Paris in 1743. It followed the composer’s return to the French capital from The Hague in the wake of the bankruptcy of his patron, the formerly wealthy merchant François Du Liz. Like the three earlier books, there are 12 sonatas in the publication, each of which has four movements.

Claudio Santoro was one of Brazil’s most eminent and influential composers. Over a 50-year period, he wrote a cycle of 14 symphonies that is widely acclaimed as the most significant cycle of its kind ever written in Brazil. The two selected works in this inaugural volume of the first complete recording of his symphonies focus on the 1950s, a period when Santoro sought a more direct and communicative idiom using Brazilian elements. His use of folk-based material is nonetheless highly creative, sometimes indeed abstract, as in key moments of Symphony No. 5. Symphony No. 7 is one of his most complex and intense works, a celebration of his country’s new capital Brasília in music of striking modernity. • Claudio Santoro was one of the most restless and versatile musicians of our time – a prodigy, inspired creator and brilliant interpreter, dynamic organizer, lucid educator and researcher. This new release is first in a new cycle of Santoro’s complete symphonies.