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.
Symphony No. 4, in three brief movements lasting less than 20 minutes, is subtitled “Brasília”, but it’s dedicated to Leonard Bernstein and was largely composed in New York. Both Bernstein and the composer were especially impressed by the marvelous central slow movement (which is as long as the two outer movements combined), and in particular with its “crazy” climax. A pellucid, formally elegant, richly scored work based on Brazilian folk music (but never slavishly so and never at the expense of structural coherence), it would make a terrific “first half” piece at a typical symphony concert. The Abertura Festiva lives up to its name, being brilliantly scored with an especially colorful percussion battery–and like the eponymous piece by Shostakovich, it’s simply a joy from start to finish.
If you acquired the first disc in this series (and if you didn’t, you should be ashamed), then you know that Neschling and his orchestra turn in first-rate playing. Only a bit of strain in the big fugue toward the end of the First Symphony’s opening movement reveals the string players under pressure, but otherwise this is world-class music-making in the service of world-class music. Glorious sonics, solid on the bottom and bright but never shrill on top, complete a most attractive picture.
