Naxos' intriguing series of releases devoted to Portuguese music has already devoted one disc to the music of Luís de Freitas Branco, the most prominent Portuguese composer of the first half of the twentieth century. This release features the composer's Symphony No. 2, written in 1926 and 1927 and including a dash of many of the styles that were in the air at the time in the Romance-language sphere. Annotator Álvaro Cassuto throws up his hands and proclaims the style of Freitas Branco's four symphonies "neo-classical ...
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Naxos' intriguing series of releases devoted to Portuguese music has already devoted one disc to the music of Luís de Freitas Branco, the most prominent Portuguese composer of the first half of the twentieth century. This release features the composer's Symphony No. 2, written in 1926 and 1927 and including a dash of many of the styles that were in the air at the time in the Romance-language sphere. Annotator Álvaro Cassuto throws up his hands and proclaims the style of Freitas Branco's four symphonies "neo-classical-romantic," but he really should have added some reference to Impressionism. The Andantino con moto second movement offers straightforward antique-flavored melodies that you might guess were products of Respighi, but such moments of simplicity are balanced, or contradicted, by an intricate cyclical motivic scheme linking the work's four movements. The symphony is an ambitious work, but possibly of the most interest to general listeners are the two 10-minute tone poems that round out the...
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