Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906-1994)
Piano Works
Glosas LG127 (1950)
Embalos (1955-73)
Álbum do jovem pianista LG13 (1953-74)
Luís Duarte (piano)
rec. 2024, Sala Suggia da Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal
Hyperion CDA68470 [81]
Even if you clip your search wings and restrict yourself to MusicWeb International you will soon enough find a battalion of CDs presenting the music of Portuguese composer Fernando Lopes-Graça. There was a time, at the turn of the 20th century when this composer was sustained by the Portusom label. That was how I came to ‘know’ him as a listening experience. He wrote piano music as well, and this is not the first disc of his works in that direction. Other labels (Naxos; Toccata) have taken him under their wings since those days.
His writing and his sound are not avant-garde but neither are they as simple as Einaudi. His music is here akin to that of Mompou but more varied. There is always a folk twist that recalls the piano solos of E. J. Moeran. If you have a taste for the sort of music featured on Kirsten Johnson’s late-lamented Guild CDs (Kenge and Rapsodi) do not hesitate.
Lopes-Graça is fortunate in having Luís Duarte as one of his voices in the century after this fine Portuguese composer lived and died. Portuguese music has never lacked for Hungarian connections as we have learnt from the sadly long-gone Portusom series. Hungary and Budapest figure in Duarte’s academic background. He is also a professor at the Escola Profissional de Música de Espinho. As a pianist he fully embraces Lopes-Graça’s music, which in his hands is lovingly etched, slowly spun and temperately orated; not to forget episodes of urgent velocity.
The eleven Glosas on Portuguese traditional songs are heard here first in this collection of diminutive pieces that range, in duration, between 1:26 and 5:24. Lopes-Graça is not overly talkative; he knows when to stop. These are not delicate Meissen miniatures. His is a subtle creative voice, eloquent and plangent but not taciturn. There is, about these works, a joy in innocence and one ‘spritzed’ with a touching “wrong note” edginess. Moments both liquid and impressionistic are articulated as well as colours that remind us of Rawsthorne and Bartók. Folk dance is also in evidence, but rendered in voices of dreamy waves, gawkiness and cut-glass. It’s all over-arched by melody, vigorous whirlpools of sound and dark tolling.
The Five Embalos (Lullabies) are mostly from 1973 – and the last two of this handful, from 1955. They move between insistent carolling and the sybaritic trilling of warm folk melodies of the type I associate with Eugene Goossens. Finally, he conjures images of hammock-swing, secure and slow to a beguiling tune. Nothing is too obvious in a progression that slowly sways and cartwheels through a balmy universe.
Finally, there is an extensive collection in the form of Albums for the young pianist. ‘Young” mind you; these are not for children. This composer does not cheat or talk down to his intended artists nor does he take refuge in complexity. Tinkling or tolling bells arch and stretch across these scores. There is quiet eloquence in abundance but it is filtered through the simplicity of a rural chapel – not so much Sagrada Familia as Down Ampney. Other pieces in the sequence impress for their honeyed dignity, for the gentle echoes of a child’s folk song, for brusque, dancing confidence or urgency pushed to point of hysteria.
The booklet sports a fulsome essay which thankfully deals in background specifics as well as more general impressions. It is by Mario Vieira de Carvalho. Also we should doff the hat to Hyperion for the disc’s very long playing time and for the natural sound they have captured.
It would be far too easy to ignore the voice of Lopes-Graça amid the media clamour around the hayride of new composers’ recordings. Don’t.
Rob Barnett
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Contents
Glosas, LG 127
1. No. 1, Da canção alentejana “De noite tudo são sombras”
2. No. 2, De uma cantiga de Penamacor
3. No. 3, Da canção alentejana “Cisirão, Cisirão”
4. No. 4, Do romance de Sta Iria de Mação
5. No. 5, Dos “Reis” de Mação
6. No. 6, Da canção madeirense “Ó minha vaca, meus bois”
7. No. 7, De uma cantiga bailada ribatejana
8. No. 8, Da “Canção da roda”, do Paúl
9. No. 9, Da “Moda da segada”, de Vinhais
10. No. 10, Da canção alentejana “Ó pavão, lindo pavão”
11. No. 11, Do “Senhor Deus de misericórdia” de Vinhais
Embalos
12. Lullaby, LG 148 No. 1
13. Lullaby, LG 148 No. 2
14. Lullaby, LG 148 No. 3
15. Lullaby, LG 136 No. 1
16. Lullaby, LG 136 No. 2
Álbum do jovem pianista, LG 134
17. I. Prelúdio
18. II. Coral
19. III. Rondel
20. IV. Chula
21. V. Acalanto
22. VI. Folha de album
23. VII. Repouso
24. VIII. Canto de alva
25. IX. Exercício de harmonia
26. X. Canto dos pequenos pedintes p’los Santos
27. XI. Pequeno passeio matinal
28. XII. Cantiga de roda
29. XIII. Alla Bartók
30. XIV. A espanholita
31. XV. Pequena contenda em forma de toccata
32. XVI. Canção sem palavras
33. XVII. As terceirinhas do Padre Inácio
34. XVIII. Bailata
35. XIX. Passo trocado
36. XX. Melodia
37. XXI. Jornada gloriosa
