The Houston Symphony is excited to announce that the Dutch label Pentatone has released a new recording featuring Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the orchestra: Music of the Americas. Recorded over the course of two concert weekends in early 2017, the album brings together 20th century composers from North and South America with four lively, dance-inspired works, including Gershwin’s An American in Paris, Revueltas’ Sensemayá, Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and Piazzolla’s Tangazo.
“For this new recording, we decided to feature four contrasting works that provide impressions of the Americas and illuminate as many colors in the music as possible. The common denominator in all these works is the rhythm which is highly articulated, flexible and energized,” said Orozco-Estrada. Here are some fun facts about the four pieces featured in the recording:
- In Sensemayá, Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas was inspired by an eponymous poem by Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. The poem and the music depict the sacrifice of a snake in a traditional Afro-Cuban religious ceremony.
- Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story—one of the most popular musicals of all time— illustrates the story of two rival gangs in New York by juxtaposing a jazz-blues ‘American’ idiom with a more ‘Latin American’ Puerto Rican sound, in which the Cuban mambo, cha-cha and the Mexican huapango are also integrated. Symphonic Dances from West Side Story includes many of the musical’s most popular tunes, including “Mambo,” “Cool,” and “Somewhere.”
- Ástor Piazzolla’s Tangazo incorporates neo-classical elements such as a fugue into the tango, the national Argentinian dance music par excellence.
- George Gershwin’s symphonic poem An American in Paris paints an evocative picture of an American’s adventures in the city of light with his trademark jazzy style.
The CD is now available for purchase through houstonsymphony.org. It’s also available in digital formats for streaming and downloads through Spotify, iTunes and Amazon. Symphony fans can also look forward to the release of an additional recording, Haydn—The Creation, in April 2018. Happy listening!
