Search - Branca Bilhar, Maria Helena Rosas Fernandes, Chiquinha Gonzaga :: Brasileira: Piano Music by Brazilian Women

Remarkable music from Brasil

Kent J. Lyon | College Station, TX USA | 07/23/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Luciana Soares is a child prodigy pianist from Goiais, Brasil, a seemingly unlikely origin for such a miraculous young pianist. She studied with the best pedagogue in Brasil, tracing her pedagogic lineage directly to Franz Liszt. She taught at a prominent conservatory in Brasil. She holds Master and PhD degrees in music, and on this CD performs music she has personally compiled from 19th and 20th Century Brazilian women composers, some trained, some naturals, all remarkable. Dr. Soares studied the music and the composers extensively and interviewed several of them. Some of this music had never been published or performed, to my understanding, and it runs a wide gamut of popular, folk, and classical. With a Brazilian musical soul, and an Hungarian pedagogical pedigree, Dr. Soares is a completely uncanny pianist. She performs a vast repetoire of classical music (one has not lived until hearing her perform such music as Liszt's "Dance of the Trolls", or Villa Lobos' "Valse Triste", or Ravel or Prokofiev, Guarnieri, or Beethoven variations, and we're avidly awaiting more CD's of her performances). The short pieces she performs here are definitive performances of absolutely wonderful music, melodic, rythmic, evocative, visual, moving, and fun, of the best quality of Brazilian music. Who knew there were so many marvelous Brazilian composers. Recent Brazilian popular music is of course widely known here, and widely played, from The Girl from Ipenema and all of Jobim, to Brazilian popular classics, performed often by American jazz artists (the late Stan Getz perhaps foremost). But this music is mostly new to the US, and stunning. Truly a remarkable gift from Brasil. Listen to Branca Bilhar's Samba Sertanejo (and you can't possibly sit still, you have to move with the music), Fernandes' Preludio and Valsa, Pereira da Silva's Valsa-Choro No. 2, and Chiquinha Gonzaga's mysteriously melodic Corta-Jaca, and Atraente. Anyone who has heard Arturo Lima, the great Russian trained Brazilian Pianist, perform, for example, Ernesto Nazareth's marvelous Choro's, or Baden Powell performing Villa Lobos' Choro No. 1, will immediately recognize that Luciana Soares is of the same standard here, dare one say even superior, and more authentically Brazilian, than these. She has an expressive capacity that is riveting. She communicates more directly and more powerfully with her audience than any pianist that I have ever heard perform, including Emmanual Ax, Murray Peria, Mischa Dichter, Horowitz, Alicia de la Rocha, Eteri Andjaparidze. One gets a sense that she is channeling the spirits of the composers when she performs. One feels the music from inside. She combines a virtuosos technical ability with an apparently intuitive (but perhaps more from extensive study and hard-won insight--it only seems to be intuitive when she performs it, a testament to her artistry) understanding of the music, and an ability to communicate it, that I have never before heard. I would unreservedly recommend this music to anyone who enjoys piano performance, Brazilian music, folk, popular, classical music, or wants to hear something new and remarkable.

Kent J. Lyon"