“Luis de Freitas Branco was the towering figure in Portuguese
music during the first half of the twentieth century” so
proclaims, triumphantly, the rear insert of this CD. This is
the second volume of what, one assumes, will be a complete series
of the four symphonies of this little known composer. Why little
known? Well, as a friend of mine said, possibly thinking of the
Eurovision song contest “Did anything good, (musically),
come out of Portugal?” It certainly did in the sixteenth
century, but with this series and the CDs on Marco Polo of orchestral
works by Joly Braga Santos (1924-1988) a picture of twentieth
century
Portuguese music before and after the Second War is beginning
to emerge.
I missed
Volume
1 which included the First Symphony so am as it
were, a Freitas Branco virgin. I started therefore with the huge
Second Symphony which falls into the usual four movements
with a Scherzo placed third. In the first movement - in a sort
of sonata-form - the main material is stated almost at the start.
It is a fragment of Gregorian chant which is more fully expressed
in a grand style at the end of the work. On the whole I found
that I lost interest during this movement; the ideas were weak.
However the slow movement which follows with its somewhat modal
melodic lines is very attractive and delicately orchestrated.
The Scherzo appears to have been influenced by Bruckner but although
I have never heard this music before I do feel that this performance
is too ponderous. The finale is a suitable summation. Harmonically,
considering the date, the work is unadventurous even dull at
times, but taken on its own terms the final effect is pleasing
and generally fulfilling.
The conductor Álvaro Cassuto has spent many years promoting
and recording Portuguese music and he writes the fascinating
and helpfully analytical booklet notes. He comments that Freitas
Branco’s “early works reflect the influence of various
musical styles which he tried out until settling for what he
called a neo-classical romantic style”. By “early” I
suspect he means about 1910 when the composer was 20 and had
not long finished his studies with, of all people, Engelbert
Humperdinck. ‘Artificial Paradises’ is of that date
and “is generally considered … as Freitas Branco’s
masterpiece”. What a pity that the composer did not really
exploit this language further. Based on Thomas de Quincey’s
autobiographical essay ‘Confessions of an Opium Eater’ this
is an impressionist tone-painting which must have seemed very
modern at the time. It is a work of polytonality with a lack
of clear, conventional form. Its melodies often lead nowhere,
is evocative of the mist in a Monet painting and has definite
touches of Debussy. It is most sensitively played and a terrific
highlight, having heard it, I immediately wanted to hear it again.
In between these two contrasting works there is one other on
this CD, that is ‘After a reading of Guerra Junqueiro’ written
the previous year when he was 19. What an astonishing work it
is for a teenager. It is quite individual and wonderfully and
colourfully orchestrated. Although the booklet notes say nothing
about him, Junqueiro, who died in 1923, was a lawyer, journalist,
author and poet. What is odd about the piece and what I really
cannot work out is why there are several almost-quotations from
Strauss’ ‘Till Eulenspiegel’ and ‘Don
Juan’. There is nothing in any of these works by Branco
that is in any way ‘Iberian’. The Portuguese have
often said how distinctive they are and want to be. Freitas Branco
trained not in Madrid but in Berlin and Paris; and Strauss and
Debussy at this time were all the rage hence their strong influence
on the young composer. Theirs was an influence which by the time
of his 2
nd Symphony he wanted to throw off in the
hope that he might discover himself. Unfortunately, for me, I
prefer him as a young man attuned to new developments rather
than to how he became once he had settled in his homeland after
the Great War.
So with these reservations then, this disc becomes an interesting
buy, extremely well played by the Irish Orchestra. If the experts
are right and ‘Artificial Paradises’ is Luis de Freitas
Branco’s finest work then don’t await the remaining
discs because this is the one to go for.
Gary Higginson
see also review by Rob Barnett
RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra/Álvaro
Cassuto 
