The Divertimento, composed for the Portuguese Pavilion at the 1957 Lausanne National Fair, challenges audiences with unresolved dissonances, anticlimax, and unstable rhythms, rather than aiming to 'please' or 'thrill' them.
Performer Biography
Bruno Borralhinho, the conductor and cellist on this album, is artistic director of the Ensemble Mediterrain and a member of the Dresdner Philharmonie.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Lopes-Graça's aesthetic vision involved combining traditional Portuguese music's 'rustic' and 'archaic' elements with modern musical techniques, breaking from academic tradition and official national identity.
Composer Biography
Lopes-Graça was prohibited from holding any public role by the dictatorship after being arrested by the political police at the Lisbon Conservatory, despite coming first in a competition for a teaching post.
Composer's Artistic Vision
The Quatro Invenções for solo cello are part of Lopes-Graça's 'essentially atonal dramatic expressionism' phase, characterized by the use of developing variation based on intervallic cells.
Compositional Technique
The Sinfonieta, 'Homage to Haydn', includes a direct quotation from the third movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 100 'Military', creating a 'fight for supremacy' between the two pieces of music.
Composer Biography
Fernando Lopes-Graça, a Portuguese composer, founded a republican weekly newspaper, A Acção, in 1928 to oppose the dictatorship, leading to its closure and his arrest.
