Bodas de prata & quatro cantos

Although he is of a later generation, the Brazilian composer and instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti has much in common with Piazzolla - not least the ambition that took them both to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Her advice to Gismonti was much the same as she gave to Piazzolla - that, while he would do very well with the avant-garde European-style music he was writing at that time, he should go back to his South American roots. As Gismonti recalled it, ‘One day she said, "0K, Mr. Gismonti, that's the last day of studies for you, because you have to go back home and discover that you have a big fountain of inspiration in your own place. Go back there and pay attention to the samba school and to berimbau music and Forro music." I did and it changed my life.’

Based on four songs, Bodas de prata casts the cello in the role of the singer, drawing well shaped melodic lines with frequent, highly expressive microtonal inflections. The most striking piano material is the brightly coloured imitation of bird song which is introduced in the opening bars and which recurs in the middle and at the end to form a kind of framework for the songs, the last of which is most eloquently developed.