This album was recorded in July 2018 at Auditório Senhora da Boa Nova, Estoril, Portugal, with Pedro Coelho serving as both producer/editor and engineer/piano technician.
Performer Biography
Pianist Joana Gama's expressive playing style is influenced by her early training in both music and ballet.
Compositional Technique
Fernando Lopes-Graça sought authentic source material in traditional Portuguese music, believing it revealed 'the true musical potential of the Portuguese people' and aimed to give it a 'classical sheen' through variation technique and contemporary methods.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Fernando Lopes-Graça, an opponent of the Estado Novo dictatorship, aimed to use music to create a 'national collective spirit' that would resist the regime's propaganda.
Composer Biography
Amílcar Vasques-Dias, born in northern Portugal and now living in the Alentejo, combines childhood memories of the countryside with his present experience of the Alentejo landscape in his work Lume de chão.
Album & Artwork
The album features two Portuguese composers, Amílcar Vasques-Dias and Fernando Lopes-Graça, whose works reflect on Portuguese identity.
Historical Context
The composers Fernando Lopes-Graça and Amílcar Vasques-Dias lived through the beginning and end of Portugal's Estado Novo dictatorship, which concluded with the Carnation Revolution in 1974.
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