The Mexican composer, arranger and guitarist Luis Felipe Ramírez Santillán (°1970) presents his first monographic cd. The aim is to showcase his compositional style. The selected works are intended to represent his complete oeuvre. As a symphonist, a cd with purely symphonic repertoire is certainly appropriate.
The third symphony Symfónia z dial'ky (2020) opens the cd. It is the work with which the Mexican composer earned his doctorate in the arts. The symphony consists of three movements. The first is theatrical and exuberant. Like the bouquet in fireworks, the music bursts energetically into a climax here. A kind of energy that you would normally expect towards the end.
The second movement continues this energy but is sometimes interrupted by quieter passages. In the third movement, this fragmentation is continued. It is a sort of collage of different musical ideas. Some passages are theatrical, others are playful or lyrical. The whole forms a sound journey where you don't know what to expect. You let the music embrace and carry you along.
Santillán presents here a very atypical symphony but because each movement builds on the other, it still forms a whole.
FES-C (1995) [track 04] is a symphonic poem. It begins mysteriously with strings and brass accents. The work soon takes on a triumphal character and the brass instruments become increasingly important. The building drive is interrupted by quieter passages in which tension is built up and worked towards a climax again. When this finally culminates in a timpani solo with brass accents, this resolution comes as a relief.
The cd concludes with a work for piano and orchestra: El Piano (2007) [track 06]. The dreamy atmosphere with which the piano opens contrasts with everything that came before. The orchestra enters, also with a dreamy, late-romantic undertone. But the full texture of the orchestra echoes the theatrical quality from previous works and is already a preview of the end. The climax with exuberant use of brass falls back to the dreamy sounds of the solo piano as the final notes fade away. The circle is complete.
3/5
- WHO: Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra cond. Sergei Skripka (track 1-3), Moscow Studio Symphony Orchestra cond. Alexander Polianichko (track 4-6), Irina Popova [piano]
- WHAT: Luis Felipe Ramírez Santillán: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3
- LABEL: Davinci C00513
- ORDER: JPC