Fred Sturm, solo piano: "Paris - Rio, 1920"
Music of Nazareth, Milhaud, and Villa-Lobos
Local pianist Fred Sturm will take you to Rio in the years just before 1920, when three composers crossed paths there. At that time, Rio de Janeiro had a vibrant popular musical tradition, a mixture of European and African influences called choro. At the center of that tradition was a pianist/composer named Ernesto Nazareth, whose 150th birthday we celebrate this year. He left a rich legacy of pieces he called Tangos Brasileiros, which captured the essence of the choro style.
Darius Milhaud, a cultivated French composer, visited Rio for two years during World War I, and was entranced by the musical scene there, where he heard Nazareth play. He tried to translate the flavor of the musical style in his dance suite, Saudades do Brazil, giving the rhythms and melodic patterns a European flavor by adding polytonal harmony, and presenting this music to Parisian audiences.
Heitor Villa-Lobos was an aspiring composer who made his living performing in the choro style, and who sometimes played with Nazareth. He sought success as a classical composer, writing music that was initially similar to what was being written in France at the time, later adding Brazilian flavor. He took his music to Paris in the 1920s, where he soon achieved an international reputation.
This concert will present several of Nazareth's Tangos Brasileiros, paired with Milhaud's Saudades do Brazil. It will also feature two suites of Villa-Lobos, written at precisely the time Milhaud was in Brazil. Suite Floral has a very European flavor to it, though it has many elements that suggest a composer with a very individualistic personality. A Prole do Bebê sounds like it was written by a completely different composer, with some harmonic and melodic elements derived from Debussy (principally whole tone scales) set against very Brazilian rhythms. It was this suite in particular that launched Villa-Lobos international success, when Arthur Rubenstein began programming it on his concerts.
Fred Sturm specializes in the piano music of Latin America, with a special emphasis on Heitor Villa-Lobos. He has performed regularly in the Albuquerque area and beyond for the past three decades, and has recorded six CDs to date, most recently Federico Ibarra, Music for Piano. His CDs have recently received favorable reviews in Fanfare Magazine, with Michael Cameron writing (March, 2012), "It’s safe to say that his surveys of Latin American, American, and Spanish music have earned him well-deserved prominence in this corner of the vast keyboard literature." Peter Burwasser wrote (March 2013), "He plays the music of Ibarra as if he were writing it on the spot. It is rare to hear a musician so inhabited by the material. Sturm has played the piano his entire life, but did not have a typical conservatory training. Nevertheless, the technique he displays here can be astonishing, especially in his ability to draw out all of the inner voicings in the music, even as they are layered across a huge dynamic range. . . For the listener, this music can be challenging and even strange, but as an example of extraordinary artistry at the service of bold, iconoclastic music, this is a powerful release."
$20/15