Lopez-Graça: Complete Music for String Quartet and Piano, Vol. 1

Featuring

Olga Prats
Luís Pacheco Cunha
Anne Victorino de Almeida
Isabel Pimentel
Catherine Strynckx
Quarteto Lopes-Graça

Fernando Lopes-Graça

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Composer's Artistic Vision

Fernando Lopes-Graça's artistic vision sought to combine local Portuguese traditions and forms of music-making with the European concert tradition.

Recording & Production

This album was recorded on Fernando Lopes-Graça's own Bechstein piano, which is now housed in the Museu da Música Portuguesa.

Compositional Technique

Fernando Lopes-Graça's First String Quartet, which won an international prize, shares many characteristics with Béla Bartók's Fourth and Fifth Quartets, such as a five-movement structure and reliance on arch-forms.

Composition History

Fernando Lopes-Graça's piano quintet Canto de Amor e de Morte was composed during a period of deep personal, social, and artistic crisis in his life, including the death of his father.

Composer Biography

Fernando Lopes-Graça, a Portuguese composer, was twice arrested for being an open dissident during the dictatorship in Portugal, which prevented him from teaching in public schools.

Performer Biography

Olga Prats, a pianist on this recording, is considered a foremost interpreter of Portuguese piano music, especially that of Fernando Lopes-Graça, and has premiered and recorded works dedicated to her by several leading composers.