This is as good as a Latin American hits collection
gets. The Venezuela Symphony Orchestra is on superb form, at least as
good and as spirited as the more famous Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra;
their American director, Theodore Kuchar, leads energetic performances
that really get into the music’s ethnic spirit. What of the music
itself? Moncayo’s sizzling
Huapango, which spins an endless
stream of crazily catchy tunes in a salsa-dancing romp; Ginastera’s
brilliant dances from the ballet
Estancia; Oscar Lorenzo Fernández’s
Batuque, a favorite encore of Toscanini and Bernstein; Arturo
Márquez’s
Danzón No. 2, which has to be at
least nominated for the title of Most Fun Classical Music Ever.
Mixed into the hit parade - which, I notice, is missing a few of the
usual suspects:
Sensemayá,
Sobre las oas, anything
by Villa-Lobos or Piazzolla - are a few works that were new to me. Take
Aldemaro Romero’s
Toccata bachiana y pajarillo aldemaroso.
Those familiar with Spanish will recognize
aldemaroso as the
adjectival form of the composer’s own name; it’s as if Beethoven
had written a piece called
Scherzo ludwigoso. It’s unclear
to me whether or not Brilliant Classics insists on spelling the title
“tocatta” because Romero spelled it wrong, or because Brilliant
spelled it wrong. Yuri Hung, a Venezuelan composer born in 1968, contributes
a work,
Kanaima, which evokes the sounds of the tropical jungle.
It’s all a boatload of fun. Played with swagger and excitement,
conducted totally idiomatically, recorded well, and sold for dirt cheap.
I only wish there had been more: at 56 minutes. There was plenty of
room for a few more gems. That is, indeed, probably a good reason to
prefer Gustavo Dudamel’s album
Fiesta:
you get a lot of the same music, plus the brilliant
Santa Cruz de
Pacairigua, which I’ve called the Venezuelan version of
American
in Paris. If you buy this, you should next investigate the Venezuela
Symphony’s CD of music by Evencio Castellanos - which includes
Pacairigua, and is so nice we
reviewed
it
twice
- and track down Revueltas’ glorious
La
noche de los mayas.
One final thought: if you’ve never heard Márquez’s
Danzón No. 2, and you enjoy having fun, you need to listen
immediately. It’s worth the price of any CD it’s on.
Brian Reinhart 
