Part of the Naxos label's much-welcomed "Music of Brazil" series, this release inaugurates a cycle of the symphonies of composer Claudio Santoro (1919-1989). Santoro wrote 14 symphonies covering his entire creative career; the pair here were composed respectively in 1955 and 1960. He is often performed in Brazil but rarely elsewhere. Conductor Neil Thomson leads Brazil's Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra, which has probably played them before, and the performances are confident and clean. One might expect a Brazilian composer of ...
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Part of the Naxos label's much-welcomed "Music of Brazil" series, this release inaugurates a cycle of the symphonies of composer Claudio Santoro (1919-1989). Santoro wrote 14 symphonies covering his entire creative career; the pair here were composed respectively in 1955 and 1960. He is often performed in Brazil but rarely elsewhere. Conductor Neil Thomson leads Brazil's Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra, which has probably played them before, and the performances are confident and clean. One might expect a Brazilian composer of this period to be laboring under the shadow of Heitor Villa-Lobos, but Santoro charted his own path. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris but was more influenced by Eastern European composers and, perhaps, by Hindemith; consider the heavily polyphonic first movement of the Symphony No. 5. He uses extended tonality but does not abandon tonal music here. Santoro does employ Brazilian national materials but never in a semi-popular way or even in the fashion of Bartók, probably...
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![Santoro: Symphonies 5 and 7 [Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra; Neil Thomson] [Naxos: 8574402]](https://www1.alibris-static.com/cover/o85560snvva_t.jpg)
