March 7, Saturday 8:00 pm
First Pres Santa Monica

A salon of primitivism, ecstasy, abandon and finesse.

Heitor Villa-Lobos
  Alma Brasileira
  Rudepoema
Olivier Messiaen 
  Two Songs from Poems for Mi
Heitor Villa-Lobos
  Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5
Marius Constant 
  Pierre–Jewels
Maurice Ravel
  Piano Trio in A minor

Danny Holt, piano
Jacquelynne Fontaine, soprano
Mark Alan Hilt, piano
Cécilia Tsan
Timothy Loo
Trevor Handy
Erika Duke
Tina Soule
Armen Ksajikian
David Low
Vanessa Freebairn-Smith
Victor Lawrence
Roger Lebow, cellos
Pantoum Trio
Robert Edward Thies, piano
Tereza Lucia Stanislav, violin
Cécilia Tsan, cello

Elizabeth Wright, conductor
 

The Brazilian taught himself to compose while inspired by the Amazon’s wet green mansions and the Caripunas Indians who lived there. In the City of Light, his intensely fragrant music with its atmosphere of longing and brutal rhythms struck Parisians as hypnotic and strange – a Rain Forest in Paris. A pair of early Messiaen songs joins the famous vocalise with cello octet in nuanced ecstasy. Using only three cellos, Constant leans over his jeweler’s glass to contemplate amethyst, ruby, sapphire, emerald, diamond and topaz. Ravel’s ever-surprising music manages to reflect cosmopolitan life, Malaysian verse, Basque dances and relentless nature showing through.