Sinfonia Para um Massacre

Jose Antônio de Almeida Prado was one of the most admired Brazilian composers of his time. The two stylistically diverse works featured on this album exemplify different creative periods in the composer’s life. The prize-winning Pequenos funerais cantantes, which was Almeida Prado’s breakthrough as a composer, is a lament full of unique soundworlds forged from different combinations of choral and orchestral writing. The superbly orchestrated Sinfonia dos OrixAs takes as its subject the Orishas (deities in the Yoruba religion) – and is a personal tribute to the rich Afro-Brazilian religious traditions, a sumptuous melodic and rhythmic feast celebrating the forces of nature.

George Walker, the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, was deeply affected by the massacre of nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015. His response was this EP, Sinfonia No. 5 “Visions”, a short, powerful work for orchestra and spoken voices. This recording is of the first public performance, in Seattle—sadly a posthumous premiere. Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard and his fine orchestra convey the work’s shock, anger, and pain with unerring skill, the quotations of well-known melodies cleverly woven into an impressive sound collage. Superbly and atmospherically recorded.