Album

Carlos Chávez: Complete Chamber Music, Vol. 4, brings to a close Southwest Chamber Music's outstanding series of Cambria recordings. This series has brought a lot of attention to Chávez's unjustly neglected chamber music, with two of the volumes earning Grammy awards in the process. Outside of the String Quartet No. 3, the Three Spirals for violin and piano, and the Trio for flute, viola, and harp, all of the works herein come from opposite ends of Chávez's historical spectrum, taken from his early and late periods. Of the three string quartets, the String Quartet No. 3, which relates to Chávez's work for Martha Graham, is easily the finest—the outer movements percolate with insistent motor rhythms and the central Lento movement is one of the most moving and deeply felt moments in Chávez. However, one should not neglect the String Quartet No. 1, a rough-hewn work from 1921 that incorporates Indian folk material tempered with a generous amount of idealism—it is a diamond in the rough. The String Quartet No. 2 is likewise interesting for its odd combination of instruments—violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The little Fuga H-A-G-C is a brief answer piece written in that same combination in the 1960s in a surprisingly straightforward, conventional idiom.

The earliest work on Carlos Chávez: Complete Chamber Music, Vol. 4, is the Sextet for piano and strings of 1919, which annotator/producer Jeff von der Schmidt describes as a "Mexican Verklärte Nacht." It seems partly romantic and partly impressionist; however, the Sextet incorporates some of the aura of the salon and lacks the clear dramatic trajectory of Schoenberg's post-romantic masterwork. It makes for an interesting contrast with Chávez's colleague Julian Carrillo's Dvorákian String Sextet of 1900, likewise steeped in European tradition but remaining Mexican at its core.

The Sonatina for piano likewise brings some of Carrillo's pre-microtonal piano music to mind; it belongs in this set as it connects to two other sonatinas submitted as a set for performance at a Copland/Sessions concert of 1928. The Sonatina for violin and piano is a vibrant, mechanistic piece reminiscent of George Antheil's Paris-period works, as are the outer movements of the Three Spirals, whereas the Sonatina for cello and piano is more enigmatic, even ghostly—rather like the second of the Three Spirals. The Variations for violin and piano of 1969 is an accomplished and ebulliently rhythmic serial-styled piece, yet it is the only work that appears to wear out its welcome. Similar techniques are used to create the guitar solo Feuille d'Album of 1974, but by comparison, one wishes it were longer. This and the corresponding Three Pieces for guitar (1923) are played expertly by guitarist John Schneider.

It is easy to see why these oddly matched compositions of Chávez were placed at the end of the series; it is not that they are inferior, but that they tend to fall outside of the rest of the Chávez's chamber corpus by virtue of their specialized nature. Nevertheless, this little-known, occasional Chávez demonstrates that he was stylistically on the cutting edge in most of the eras in which he composed, and that his work has both a sense of progression and continuity. As with the other three volumes, the quality of these Southwest Chamber Music performances is first-rate, the recording no less so, and this ends a terrific, revelatory series on a positive note in keeping with what went before.

© Uncle Dave Lewis , All Music Guide

CD 1 of 2
Carlos Chávez Composer String Quartet No.1 Work 13:47 Southwest Chamber Music Ensemble
1	1.Allegro	4:19			$0.99
2	2.Adagio	4:31			$0.99
3	3.Vivo	2:36			$0.99
4	4.Sostenuto	2:21			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer String Quartet No.2, for violin, viola, cello and double bass Work 23:48 Southwest Chamber Music Ensemble
5	1.Allegro moderato	6:42			$0.99
6	2.Scherzo	5:41			$0.99
7	3.Largo, libermente	5:33			$0.99
8	4.Moderato	5:52			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer String Quartet No.3 Work 20:58 Southwest Chamber Music Ensemble
9	1.Allegro	5:37			$0.99
10	2.Lento	5:18			$0.99
11	3.Allegro	10:03			$1.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Sonatina for Piano Work 3:47 Ming Tsu Piano
12	1.Moderato	1:06			$0.99
13	2.Andantino	0:37			$0.99
14	3.Allegretto	0:57			$0.99
15	4.Lento	1:07			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Sonatina, for violin and piano Work 7:01 Lorenz Gamma Violin, Ming Tsu Piano
16	1.Largo	1:55			$0.99
17	2.Andantino	1:38			$0.99
18	3.Allegretto	1:59			$0.99
19	4.Lento	1:29			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Sonatina, for cello and piano Work 7:59 Ming Tsu Piano, Peter Jacobson Cello
20	1.Moderato	1:39			$0.99
21	2.Vivo	1:24			$0.99
22	3.Tranquillo	3:10			$0.99
23	4.Moderato	1:46			$0.99
CD 2 of 2
Carlos Chávez Composer Sextet, for piano and strings Work 31:05 Southwest Chamber Music Ensemble
1	1.Lento	2:34			$0.99
2	2.Allegro	7:04			$1.49
3	3.Andante	11:18			$1.99
4	4.Presto Scherzando	4:46			$0.99
5	5.Allegretto	5:23			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer 3 Pieces, for guitar Work 8:01 John Schneider Guitar
6	1.Largo	2:10			$0.99
7	2.Tranquillo	3:39			$0.99
8	3.Un Poco mosso	2:12			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Three Spirals, for violin and piano Work 8:23 Lorenz Gamma Violin, Ming Tsu Piano
9	1.Vivo	3:02			$0.99
10	2.Tranquillo	1:55			$0.99
11	3.Un Poco mosso	3:26			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Fuga HAG,C (Hommage a Goddard, Columbia), for violin, viola, cello and double bass Work Southwest Chamber Music Ensemble
12	Fuga HAG,C (Hommage a Goddard, Columbia), for violin, viola, cello and double bass	2:45			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Variations, for violin with piano Work 10:42 Lorenz Gamma Violin, Ming Tsu Piano
13	1.Quarter Note = 48	0:09			$0.99
14	2.Quarter Note = 52	1:19			$0.99
15	3.Dotted Quarter Note = 126	1:11			$0.99
16	4.Quarter Note = 69	1:01			$0.99
17	5.Quarter Note = 48	0:59			$0.99
18	6.Dotted Half Note = 50	1:07			$0.99
19	7.Quarter Note = 48	0:37			$0.99
20	8.Quarter Note = 84	0:33			$0.99
21	9.Quarter Note = 48	1:22			$0.99
22	10.Quarter Note = 100	1:04			$0.99
23	11.Quarter Note = 112	1:20			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Feuille d'album, for guitar Work John Schneider Guitar
24	Feuille d'album, for guitar	2:45			$0.99
Carlos Chávez Composer Trio for flute, viola and harp Work 9:58 Jan Karlin Viola, Lawrence Kaplan Flute, Alison Bjorkdal Harp
25	1.The Snow is Dancing (after Debussy)	3:13			$0.99
26	2.Asturiana (after de Falla)	2:09			$0.99
27	3.Polo (after de Falla)	1:39			$0.99
28	4.Golliwog's Cakewalk (after Debussy)	2:57			$0.99