Album

With Carlos Chávez: Complete Chamber Music, Vol. 1, Los Angeles-based group Southwest Chamber Music Society initiates a recording project that promises to deliver all of Carlos Chávez's chamber music on four discs. Once securely considered the alpha and omega of Mexican classical music, Chávez has lost some of his primacy since his death in 1978. Carlos Chávez: Complete Chamber Music, Vol. 1, helps set the record straight. This initial volume concentrates on a cycle of three multi-movement Inventions dating from 1959—1967, Suite for Double Quartet drawn from the ballet The Daughter of Colchis (later Dark Meadow) commissioned by Martha Graham (1942), and a short trifle for solo oboe, Upingos (1957). Inventions, composed for solo piano (originally for William Masselos), string trio, and solo harp, respectively, are solid, expressive, and exuberantly rhythmic works written within a highly dissonant harmonic language. The piece for solo harp, Invention III, is particularly striking and beautifully played here by Amy Wilkins. The Graham ballet suite is splendid, and should be required listening for those who know well the other work she commissioned at this time—Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland. Chávez's Suite for double quartet is more bitter in tone than the famous Copland work, but there are such points of similarity that it may be said that Chávez's score represents the other side of Copland's coin. Chávez's music is fabulously well played and recorded here; if the future installments in the series are as good as this, enthusiasts of twentieth century American music really have something to look forward to.

© Uncle Dave Lewis , All Music Guide

CD 1
Carlos Chávez Composer Invention I, for piano Work Recorded 2002 21:56 Gayle Blankenburg Piano
1	1.Con anima, tempo giusto	10:35			$1.99
2	2.Lento	5:37			$0.99
3	3.Vivo, tempo giusto	5:44			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Invention II, for string trio Work Recorded 1999 12:19 Jan Karlin Viola, Christine Frank Violin, Maggie Edmondson Cello
4	1.Molto moderato, in tempo giusto	4:35			$0.99
5	2.Molto lento, tempo giusto	3:30			$0.99
6	3.Vivo, in tempo giusto	4:14			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Invention III, for harp Work Recorded 2002 7:02 Amy Wilkins Harp
7	Quarter note = 60	2:16			$0.99
8	Quarter note = 36	2:04			$0.99
9	Quarter note = 152	2:42			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Suite, for double quartet Work Recorded 2000 24:33 Southwest Chamber Music Ensemble
10	1.Preludio	5:52			$0.99
11	2.Interludio	2:30			$0.99
12	3.Incantamento	2:47			$0.99
13	4.Sarabanda	4:57			$0.99
14	5.Peana	4:49			$0.99
15	6.Postludio	3:38			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Upingos, for oboe Work Recorded 2002 Stuart Horn Oboe
16	Upingos, for oboe	2:51			$0.99