In these days when the industry seems to be doing its damnedest to sideline classical music and even physical media (the “vinyl revival” aside), it’s not unusual for the major labels to undervalue their considerable treasures to the extent of just dumping them out onto the market in cheaply-priced boxed sets. Many of these package their individual discs in cardboard sleeves that replicate the original LP cover art and program notes (albeit microscopically), with an accompanying booklet containing frustratingly minimal information. Even so, I must say, it’s nice, from both a collector’s and classical music-lover’s perspective, to be able to own the material!
Characteristically, this set of recordings by Carlos Chávez was issued last year with little or no fanfare. At least none that I could perceive, and you know I’m all over the internet and music magazines. It was released last May, and I only happened across it, purely by chance, online in January. Of course, I ordered it immediately. I’ve been making it a point to listen to everything attentively over the past week, thinking I would write up some of my thoughts for Cinco de Mayo.
Granted, the music of Carlos Chávez is perhaps not for everyone, but I confess this is one of those sets that made my heart skip a beat. I didn’t know some of these recordings even existed!
To give an idea of the significance of Chávez to Mexican music, pour Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and perhaps William Schuman or Howard Hanson into a margarita machine. Not that Chávez’s music sounds like any of these. At his most populist, he is closest to Copland, but when he truly flexes his modernist muscle, he looks across the States to Europe, where he assimilates the lessons of the world’s 20th century masters, but always on his own terms. How Chávez most resembles the Americans I cite is as his country’s most significant composer, conductor, and music educator. (Schuman was president of Juilliard, and Hanson headed the Eastman School for some 40 years.)
Unsurprisingly, Copland and Chávez were very good friends. The earliest of these recordings date from 1938, the year Copland introduced “El Salón México” (written during an extended stay in the country and given its debut with Chávez conducting). It was Copland’s watershed work that led to his greatest successes and his most characteristic sound. The folk song “La paloma azul” (“The Blue Dove”) is included in the set, in Chávez’s arrangement, and is immediately recognizable as one of the tunes assimilated by Copland.
I would love Chávez forever if he had composed only his “Sinfonía India” – tuneful, evocative, expansive in spirit (if concise in structure), immediate, and joyous. It’s also full of good, memorable folk tunes and indigenous percussion. Most significant for American music, it points the way for Copland’s western scores. Never have the native instruments sounded so authoritative as in these recordings. I wonder if this would now be considered cultural appropriation? Back then, it would have been regarded as musicology. More often than not, the set’s performances employ Mexican musicians. How many of them are “Indian” is anyone’s guess.
In the collection’s earliest recordings, the mono sound only lends the works a more modernist edge. The 1940 audio is impressive. The two tracks from 1938 are wonderful for Chávez cognoscenti, but I would recommend getting to know the music first from the later stereo recordings, also included in the set. Over all, the sound lacks for nothing for those of us who grew up in the era of stereo LPs. Just don’t go into it expecting state-of-the-art digital recording.
For Cinco de Mayo, my recommendation would be to start with the recordings of the populist and indigenous selections on CD 2, in stereo. Once the tequila begins to take effect, you can move on to the mono on CD 1. Then when you’re really starting to feel it, advance to the symphonies. (All six of them are here.) Beside the Symphony No. 2 (the “Sinfonía India”), they may seem a little demanding. But you might find yourself quickly warming to some of them. Some may remain tougher nuts. Throughout every one of them, Chávez retains a distinctive voice.
When you’re on the verge of blackout, that’s when you should put on the ballet “Pirámide.” It’s rare that Chávez ever conjures the mescaline visions of his compatriot Silvestre Revueltas, but this one is a real trip!
The disc devoted to “Soli,” chamber music for various combinations of winds and brass instruments, recalls Revueltas’ “Ocho por radio,” though none of the works are as concise or as perky. For me, “Soli I,” the shortest, is also the most successful, but if you’re in the right frame of mind, there’s plenty more modernism to chew over in Nos. II & IV.
A big surprise is Chávez’s Violin Concerto, with the Polish-Mexican violinist Henryk Szeryng. While not overtly melodic in the manner of the grand Romantic concertos, it is lyrical and structurally fascinating. Its four movements are played without break. The scherzo is cast as a theme and variations, and the finale reprises most of the material laid out in the first movement, in inversion! The soloist plays almost continuously, and the seven-minute cadenza falls in the middle of the piece where you would least expect it.
Chavez’s creative trajectory ranges from Romantic Nationalist to Modernist Nationalist. Which is to say, you can take the composer out of Mexico, but you can’t take Mexico out of the composer. Nor can you erase his fingerprints. But beyond some of the populist stuff, there is no way he should be reduced to a mere purveyor of picture postcards. Chávez was a composer of international stature, and you can tell by his music that Mexico City was no musical backwater. As a conductor, he imported all the major composers of his day, and he interacts with all the latest trends in his own music (except, on the evidence of this set, serialism).
By the time we get to selections from the ballet “Pirámide,” recorded in 1973, we are entering avant-garde territory. How fascinating that, on its LP release, this was on the flip side of Copland’s complete recording of “Appalachian Spring!” Here, Chávez conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and Ambrosian Singers.
By the end of the seven discs, you will be well-familiar with Chávez’s “Sinfonía India,” the equally concise, though more severe “Sinfonía de Antígona” (his Symphony No. 1, derived from incidental music written for a Jean Cocteau production of “Antigone”), his “Xochipilli” (speculative Aztec music), and his arrangement of Buxtehude’s Chaconne (a real crowd pleaser in the mold of Stokowski’s “Toccata and Fugue”), as well as Blas Galindo’s “Sones de Mariachi,” all of which Chávez recorded twice for Columbia Records.
Not everything Chávez ever recorded is here. I have his Piano Concerto on another label (originally issued on Westminster with pianist Eugene List) and his “Sinfonía India” (of course) and Symphonies 1 & 4 on Everest (with the Stadium Orchestra of New York), but presumably these are the complete Columbia recordings, as advertised.
What strikes me about Chávez’s music, in whatever creative period, is that it is crafted with great integrity. At every point does it stand toe-to-toe with any art music being produced anywhere in the world at that time – which is to say that it puts most everything written today in the shade.
Again, not for everyone. If your taste for 20th century music stops with Rachmaninoff, you might just want to sample what you can find on YouTube. (Start with “Sinfonía India,” but then try some of the other symphonies before purchasing.) However, if you’re fairly serious about 20th century classical music, this is definitely worth the layout, which is probably about the price of a Cinco de Mayo dinner out, with a pitcher of margaritas.
¡Viva Carlos Chávez!
“Sinfonía India”
“La paloma azul”
Violin Concerto
Blas Galindo, “Sones de mariachi”
“Pirámide,” Act IV
Buxtehude, Chaconne in E minor
“Xochipilli”
Complete contents with sound clips
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