Julián CARRILLO (1875–1965)
Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 7 (1905, rev. 1957) [46:46]
A Isabel; Schottisch (1890) orch. Uriel Luna Herrera [4:27]
Matilde ó México en 1810: excerpts (1910) [15:21]
Marcha Nupcial No. 2 (1910) [2:52]
Luis Guillermo Hernández Ávila (baritone)
Coro and Orquesta Sinfónica de San Luis Potosí/José Miramontes Zapata
rec. December 2010 (Matilde) and October 2015 (remainder), Teatro de la Paz, San Luis Potosí, Mexico
Texts and translations included
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0583 [66:29]
My last experience hearing the music of Mexican violinist and composer Julian Carrillo came via Sterling’s recording of orchestral works that include the Symphony No.1 (see review). Given that the majority of this new disc was recorded at the same time by the same orchestra and conductor it looks as if Toccata is taking over the series and that we may yet have more examples of Carrillo’s earlier self – that is, the romantic Carrillo before he became known for his experiments in the art of acoustics and his use of microtones in his compositions.
The same impulses that drove the 1901 symphony reappear in his second symphonic adventure. There’s a similar compound of Austro-German late-Romanticism and brief, deft suggestions of his Mexican inheritance, though as before the former influence greatly predominates. It’s a longer work than its predecessor but shows a comparable grip on form. Its slow Adagio introduction is inherently dramatic, not sleepy, and verdant Alpine horn calls announce a small but potent assimilation of Brucknerian inheritance. He makes good use of the harp, though its appearance between rather granular orchestral blocks of sound point to a quixotic use of colour and texture. The musical topography is stormy and luscious, dark and light, pulsating drama and moments of almost whimsical reprieve. I didn’t follow the erudite sleeve note writer Rodolfo Ritter Arenas in finding much French music – and certainly not Satie – in the slow movement. To me it’s big-boned and Germanic with lilting lyric melodies and a doubtless coincidental Elgarian quality. However, the close, with its curious harmonies and sonorities, does certainly take the music in new directions. Piping winds, muted brass, Straussian fanfares (shades of Zarathustra) and an air of super-confidence animate the Scherzo whilst the finale has plenty of ardour and a debt to pay to Schumann. It’s in the Wagnerian mass that the music gets noisy – heroically noisy – and some may feel Carrillo takes things too thunderously as the music blazes away, as he had in the finale of the First Symphony. Better that than a damp squib though, surely.
In 1910, to celebrate the centenary of the Mexican War of Independence, Carrillo wrote a grand three-act historical opera Matilde ó México en 1810 from which we hear excerpts lasting a quarter of an hour. These include the work’s five-minute overture with its hymnal tunes and triumphal Wagnerian peroration, and a particularly attractive Intermezzo. This shows a distinct Mascagni-Puccini lineage, as well as a brief quotation from La Marseillaise, and a taut battle scene but above all the sumptuous lyricism of which Carrillo was capable. The chorus is only heard in the final excerpt along with a slightly shaky baritone soloist. It’s a rousing scene, without doubt.
There are two other pleasures. The first is an orchestration by Uriel
Luna Herrera of a youthful piano piece called A Isabel. This
is a salon Schottisch – in other words a slow Polka written when
he was only fifteen and had yet to journey to Leipzig for studies with
Salomon Judassohn. The final work is a wedding march, a grandiloquent
maestoso affair called Marcha Nupcial No. 2, thus named because,
obviously, he’d already written an earlier wedding march.
Ángel Augusto Ramírez shares booklet writing duties, focusing on the three works other than the symphony, and does so with precision and clarity, and both he and Arenas furnish a wealth of detail.
This disc proves as entertaining and revealing as the Sterling predecessor. One doesn’t feel much real advance in the symphonic works, more a reinforcement of Carrillo’s control of rich and opulent late-Romantic writing. The operatic excerpts open a door on an area yet to be truly explored. Valuable and rewarding.
Jonathan Woolf
