Jimmy López BELLIDO (b. 1978)
Symphony No. 1 The Travails of Persiles and Sigismunda (2016) [45:23]
Bel Canto – A Symphonic Canvas (2016) [30:18]
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra/Miguel Harth-Bedoya
rec. 2018/19, Bass Performance Hall, USA
MSR CLASSICS MS1737 [75:47]
Bellido was born in Lima, Peru. He flourished under a cosmopolitan education in his birth city and in Helsinki and California. His teachers have included Eero Hämeenniemi. The two works on this disc were written in 2016 when Bellido was 38.
The First Symphony, in four movements and lasting 45 minutes, is the product of Bellido's inspiration from Cervantes. It is written after the Spanish writer's last novel of the same name. Bellido first became a Cervantes apostle as a result of reading Don Quixote. Each movement in turn names the first chapters of The Travails: I. Libro Primero; II. Libro Segundo; III. Libro Tercero; IV. Libro Cuarto.
The trajectory of each movement and of the Symphony as an entity is not designed to portray the detail or even the broad span of the novel. Instead it is said to reflect and explore its atmosphere. The first movement proceeds in a cocoon of rounded tonal invention. It’s warm and thunderous with wild moments akin to Sibelius, Messiaen and Silvestrov. The second movement is a sweetened, honeyed idyll, often quiet and with much use made of harp, woodwind, solo violin and French horn. The third is explosive, furious, chattering, street-wild and uninhibited: Bernstein out of Revueltas. This movement, as with the other movements, is lucidly scored. The groaning, grunting and growling pages of the finale occasionally relent to make way for reminiscences of the cocooned interior and anterior of the first movement. Honegger-like machine rhythms enter but are always laid out with clarity and without undue complexity. Here is a composer unafraid of repeated effects, rhythms and note-cells. The movement achieves a belligerently celebratory climax crowned with a glowing and thrumming major key.
Bel Canto is an offshoot from the full-scale opera of the same name, itself a Renée Fleming Initiative at Lyric Opera Chicago. The “symphonic canvas” is in three orchestral movements: I. Perú, Real and Unreal; II. La Garúa; III. The End of Utopia. In the first we get a howling predominance of battering brass and Hanson-like fanfares. Some almost eerie writing develops from this wildness. Tension is well held and keeps things moving. This music has symphonic intent rather like the Hindemith symphonies for Mathis and Harmonie der Welt (each with a full opera in the background) though quite different in language. Repetition of figures and glowing writing help things along, as do those fanfares and even the sound of a Conch shell. In the finale, uproar and tempest, like the Revueltas moments in the Symphony, give place to heartbreak (borne by viola solo and trumpet), exultant tragic heroism and a final groaning pesante.
Miguel Harth-Bedoya is not a new name; he has recorded the music of Celso Garrido-Lecca with the Fort Worth Orchestra on Naxos.
This music is approachable and written to be approachable. These two works are from a year that must have been tumultuous for Bellido. It is too early to say whether they carry the last ounce of conviction but certainly they draw you back for repeat hearings.
Rob Barnett
