BRAZIL is the focus of sporting events this summer, but its
musical tradition was firmly established by the early 20th
century.
Before the ascent of opera in the mid-18th century, sacred music
for the Roman Catholic Church was the prime musical preoccupation
in Brazil. In his latest appearance at Birmingham Town Hall, the
conductor and Baroque scholar Jeffrey Skidmore demonstrated with
his articulate, expressive, and impeccably tuned ensemble, Ex
Cathedra, the fruits of his new researches amid secular and sacred
libraries in the former Portuguese colony, and his discussions on
performing it with professors and executants on that side of the
Atlantic.
The complete sacred masses and motets being unearthed or
revisited over there run to many hundreds. Not all, patently, are
of equal merit. But there is much to please the mind, ear, and
spirit.
Brazil's cultural influences hark back, inevitably, to Portugal:
the concert's opening item, by Manuel Cardoso (1566-1650), given a
rewarding broad treatment, confirmed how this long-lived Portuguese
composer's compositions hold up with the best Renaissance music not
just on the Iberian peninsula - Morales, Victoria, Cabezón - but in
Europe.
One brief treat, Francisco Gomes da Rocha's classical-style
March, coincided audibly with the era of Mozart; by contrast, parts
of André da Silva Gomes's Missa a oitros vozes - he was
another long survivor (1754-1844) - momentarily recalled, rather as
Mendelssohn often did, the full-bodied Baroque bustle of a Bach
fugue.
The playing of two superlative natural trumpets (Mark Bennett
and Simon Munday) brought accuracy and vivid articulation, as did
some woodwind placed in the gallery at the outset. The same brass
offset by bell-like descending patterns in the cellos, as Luis Alvo
Pinto's (18th century) invocation "Oh! Pulchra es et decora,
Filia Jerusalem" yielded to the "Domine Deus" of
Pinto's own eight-part Mass, produced magical and uplifting
effects.
The second part of the evening, interspersed by the riveting,
almost Troubadour secular cantiga "Matais de
Incéndio", yielded weightier pearls of Brazilian cathedral and
church repertoire. José Maurício Nunes Garcia's Missa
Pastoril had an elegant lilt and charm, and this substantial
Christmas work grew in appeal as it went on, with attractive
support from horns, clarinets, and bassoons.
All the vocal solos were appetising; the tenor Thomas Hobbs
merits special mention for bringing an individuality nicely offset
in an exquisite duet with his fellow-tenor Ashley Turnell.
Music by the leading Haydn-era composer José Lobo de Mesquita
(1746-1805), a fraction predictable, even his doxology a little
tame, made a stronger impact in the second half. But Garcia's
interspersed Pastoral Mass provided the meat of this
concert, with additional uplift in solos by the orchestra's leader,
Rodolfo Richter, the leading force behind the Baroque festival held
at Curitiba in southern Brazil.
To repeat, this was musically a mixed bag; but to have our
attention drawn, often so rivetingly, to such a significant, deeply
rooted, and unfamiliar tradition seemed a privilege indeed. More,
please.