Nepomuceno: Symphony In G Minor—Minas Gerais Philharmonic/Fabio Mechetti (Naxos 574067)
Recordings of the Week this summer have been a world tour of orchestral music: in June it was Music for Chamber Orchestra from Brazil, then on to Mexico for Conciertos Romanticos for piano by Ricardo Castro and Manuel Ponce. In July, there were stops in Philadelphia for symphonies by the Russian Sergei Rachmaninoff, and in Spain for music by Enrique Granados. And now in August, we’re back in Brazil for the infectious music of Alberto Nepomuceno. Fabio Mechetti and the Minas Gerais Philharmonic offer three works positively irresistable in their melodic and rhythmic invention. The program begins with the Prelude to the unfinished opera O Garatuja, a piece that Richard Strauss conducted in Rio de Janeiro in 1920. The four-movement Brazilian Suite might have been written by Tchaikovsky or Massenet and includes tone paintings like Dawn in the Mountains, Napping in a Hammock, and the Carnival-like Batuque. Nepomuceno’s Symphony in G minor of 1893 is among the earliest such works from Brazil, where it is apparently played often; it deserves to be heard elsewhere, too. Thanks to Naxos and the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it will be, as this album is part of the series, The Music of Brazil!