Claudio Santoro - Symphonies Nos. 11 & 12 (Neil Thomson)

Information

Composer: Claudio Santoro

• Concerto Grosso
• Symphony No. 11
• 3 Fragmentos sobre B-A-C-H
• Symphony No. 12 "Concertante Symphony for 9 Soloists"

Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra

Neil Thomson, conductor

Date: 2022

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.574406

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Review

Cláudio Santoro’s music always seems to grab the listener by the throat. He had such an instinct for gesture that, whichever stylistic phase he was in (he went through several), he always managed to call for attention in the most dramatic way possible. The Concerto grosso, dating from 1980, after the composer’s return to Brazil from Germany, is one of a number of hugely impressive works from his final decade, and after the expected attention-grabbing opening, provides an attractive and intriguing mixture of conventional writing and flashes of the cluster-laden, aleatoric periods of the past. It’s difficult to think of comparisons – Petrassi? Lopes-Graça? – but that is of small import.

Symphony No 11 dates from four years later and is a much darker work. Also in three movements, it inhabits a world of darkness and yearning, again characterised by those dramatic gestures that pull the listener in, and does so in spite of fast tempo markings for all three movements. The militaristic overtones of the middle movement might, in fact, suggest a certain black Shostakovian irony. There are elements of this in the finale, too, but I would certainly not want to give the impression that Santoro is incapable of lyricism. Three Fragments on BACH date from 1985 and were written for a German youth orchestra. Fragments they may be, but like the Symphony they are full of dark foreboding. In them Santoro has recourse to all the compositional techniques in his vast armoury to spin something mysterious and unexpected from the German composer’s name.

Symphony No 12 dates from two years later and redeploys concertante material from other works Santoro had written – indeed, its subtitle is ‘Sinfonia concertante for eight instruments and orchestra’. This fact confers on the work a quite different character from its predecessor. The concertante thread is very clearly preserved and there is a striking fascination with instrumental colour. The middle movement, featuring solo trumpet, once again evokes a martial style, and the dramatic finale brings together all the threads over a broad canvas. These impressive and rarely heard works are all played with absolute conviction and panache by the Gioás Philharmonic under Neil Thomson, and the recordings are crystal-clear.

-- Ivan Moody, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://musicwebinternational.com/2023/02/santoro-symphonies-naxos/

https://www.wtju.net/claudio-santoro-symphonies-break-with-symphonic-form/

https://www.classicalmusicdaily.com/2022/12/santoro.htm

https://www.naxos.com/Review/Detail/?catalogueid=8.574406&languageid=EN

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Claudio Santoro (23 November 1919 – 27 March 1989) was an internationally renowned Brazilian composer, conductor and violinist. He was a pupil of Hans-Joachim Koellreutter at the Conservatório Brasileiro de Música, and he also studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Santoro co-founded and played in the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. His prolific output was mostly instrumental and includes fourteen symphonies, three piano concertos and seven string quartets. He was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Music, the Brazilian Academy of Arts and President of the Academy of Music and Letters of Brazil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudio_Santoro

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Neil Thomson (born 23 May 1966 in London) is a British conductor and conducting professor. He studied violin and viola at the Royal Academy of Music (1984–87) and conducting with Norman Del Mar at the Royal College of Music (1987–89). He was also a member of the conducting class at Tanglewood Summer School in 1989. Since March 2014 Thomson has been the Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra. In February 2024 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Toyama Music Festival and the Sinfonia Toyama. His recordings for Naxos received widespread critical acclaim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Thomson

https://www.neilwthomson.com/

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