“My Mexican Soul” = MONCAYO: Huapango; CAMPA: Melody for Violin and Orch.; CASTRO: Intermezzo from Atzimba; HYIZAR: Imágenes; PONCE: Concierto del Sur; ROSAS Over the Waves; MARQUEZ: Danzon 2; REVUELTAS: Sensemayá; CHAVEZ: El Tropico; IBARRA: Sinfonia No. 2; TOUSSAINT: Piano Concerto: Largo; LAVISTA: Clepsydra; CAHPELA: Inguesu – Philharmonia Orchestra of the Americas/Alondra de la Parra – Sony Music 886977555527 (2 CDs), 1.1 & 1 hours *****:
This specially-priced double-CD album celebrates the 2010 Mexican Bicentennial with samples of 200 years of Mexican classical music. Some of the works will be familiar to many collectors but others are rarely heard. The special album results from two years of intensive research by the dynamic 29-year-old conductor of the orchestra she founded in 2004. She wanted to showcase the many styles and eras of Mexican music – from Ibarra’s contemporary Sinfonia No. 2, to the nearly Wagnerian Castro Intermezzo, to the Spanish-influenced Ponce guitar concerto. De la Parra was the first Mexican to conduct in New York City, and has been called “an extraordinary conductor” by Placido Domingo. She has led her orchestra in these works at live concerts in NYC and LA and is currently on a tour of Mexico celebrating her country’s Bicentennial and his album.
The soloists in the works include Spanish guitarist Pablo Sainz Villegas in the Ponce concerto, violinist Daniel Andai in the Mélodia Op. 1 by Campa, and jazz pianist Alex Brown in the slow movement from the Concerto for Improvised Piano by Eugenio Toussaint. Toussaint’s score has the parts all written out for the orchestra but the piano part is given nothing more than a figured bass and a sketch of the tunes heard in each movement. The title of the Lavista work, Clepsydra, means a water clock, and the piece commemorated the 300 th anniversary of the discovery of the San Antonio River; the composer saw music as similar to a water clock in marking and measuring time. De la Parra opens the concert with the most popular Mexican symphonic work, Huapango, which many feel to be the country’s second national anthem. The orchestra’s compelling treatment of the Revueltas work inspired by a song for killing a snake – Sensemayá – is one of the best.
Altogether a most worthwhile collection that should interest more listeners in the immense variety of symphonic music produced by Mexican composers.
— John Sunier
