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Scherzo Music Review
Revueltas Festival in California

From the 20th to the 23rd of January 2000, the small city of Santa Barbara celebrated a Revueltas Festival promoted by the active Gisèle Ben-Dor, [musical] director of the city’s symphony orchestra, steadily committed to the programming of Latin-American music. Performance of the Mexican composer’s music (whose 100th birthday was on December 31, 1999) in the United States can be appreciated in two ways: as a genuine revelation to an Anglo-Saxon public ignorant of the very existence of his transcendental figure in the art of 20th-century Mexican music; and as the possibility of preserving a cultural legacy which the numerous Mexican immigrants in California are in danger of losing. The double purpose was implemented by an intelligent and appealing apportionment of events among the most interesting spots in the city: the University of [California at] Santa Barbara (where Karl Geiringer worked), the old Franciscan Mission, [the] Arlington Theatre (an astonishing specimen of neo-Andalucian or “Spanish” Californian architecture), and other theatres and auditoriums.

As noted in two fascinating lectures by the Mexican Professor Roberto Kolb-Neuhause (of Viennese ancestry) – one of the world’s greatest authorities on Revueltas’ music, who is currently preparing a critical edition – the composer’s style is most advanced and original in his chamber works, much as his film work remains within a more conventional structure. Nevertheless, inclusion in the Festival of three films with Revueltas scores furnished the opportunity of bringing [his film music] to a wider public, as films continue generating great interest in the United States. Vamonos con Pancho Villa (Fernando de Puentes, 1935) relies on a “Mexicanistic” score that eloquently illustrates the pessimistic image of the Revolution as devouring its own offspring. One sequence allows a fleeting glimpse of Revueltas as a piano player in a bar. La noche de los mayas (Chano Ureta, 1939) spurred the composer into a slightly stereotyped mixture of fabricated pre-Columbian music, but the picture’s very script is another commonplace – a Mayan tribe living in Arcadian bliss until its encounter with the corrupting white man. Nor is plot the most important aspect of Redes (Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gomez Muriel, 1934), a formidable achievement on the aesthetic plane – “a mural painted in movement,” as Professor Kolb-Neuhaus put it – to accompany a naïve attempt to organise a trade union encouraged by the government. Enhancing the spare dialogue, Ben-Dor and the Santa Barbara Symphony brought alive Revueltas’ poetic and effective music, with first-rate synchronization. The other work on the program, Villa-Lobos’ Tenth Symphony, had a rather pallid reading (impaired by the Arlington’s poor acoustics), for a work more of effects than of true musical content. Another Villa-Lobos work programmed for the Festival met better fortune – the Quartet No.5, in the care of nameless group (members of the Symphony), possessing a contagious rhythmic vitality. The two Revueltas works interpreted by these musicians, Quartets Nos. 2 and 4, received vibrating approaches that made clear the modernity of their dissonances and “stridencies.” The session also included Clocks (1998), for piano (Alfredo Oyaguez) and strings, an amusing work, ingenuous to a degree, of Miguel del Aguila.

A varied chamber ensemble (similarly drawn from the city’s orchestra) played a most interesting panorama of Revueltas’ most advanced (and humourous) music – Ocho por radio, Tragedia en forma de rabano (no is plagio) [Tragedy in the Form of a Radish, No Plagiarism Intended], and Toccata sin fuga – meeting as many difficult challenges as before, thanks to their musicality. It is in these pieces that Revueltas’ personality is unique in its syncretism, which sets him apart as much from the “Mexicanistic” reference as from the European tradition.

The offering for the children’s audience (which turned out en masse ), with the Espiral Puppet Theatre, the percussion group Tambuco, and members of the Santa Barbara Symphony led by Gisèle Ben-Dor, was surely the most successful, with respect to the Festival’s second sociological objective. Besides the delicious realisations of Once There Was a King and The Wandering Tadpole (a work Revueltas himself introduced during his stay in Spain in 1937, in the midst of the civil war), perhaps most interesting was the opportunity to become acquainted with the chamber version of Sensemaya , a version that reduces the strength and colouring of the original symphonic poem, but which cleverly adapts itself in juxtaposition to a puppet theatre.

The Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, with the indefatigable Ben-Dor, who conducted three concerts that day, also put up on their music stands other typical works from the Revueltas catalogue: Cuauhnahuac , Homage to Federico Garcia Lorca (a score also introduced to some Spanish audiences during the [civil] war), and Musica para charlar . The astonishing percussion quartet Tambuco, capable of making music only with their arms and a table, was in charge of the second part of this concert: Thierry de May’s Musique de tables , in which they began to frame a fugue, and then, with Eduardo Soto-Millan’s Corazon Sur , proceeded to plunge the audience completely into a magic ritual.

“I’ll Always Suggest Revueltas”
Helsinki Sanomat

Gisèle Ben-Dor Wanted to Conduct the Music of Mexico’s Great Composer Silvestre Revueltas in Finland.

The name of Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) is well known to Finnish musical audiences thanks to Esa-Pekka Salonen, who has recorded with the Los Angeles Philharmonic a fine Revueltas disc nominated for the Grammy awards.

A real Revueltas specialist, though, is Uruguay-born Gisèle Ben-Dor, who is visiting for the second time as director of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. This great talent is, according to a Los Angeles Times music critic, “just the conductor we have been waiting for to make a really persuasive case for Latin composers.”

Gisèle Ben-Dor would gladly have conducted Revueltas’ music in the Helsinki concert, since this year Mexico celebrates Revueltas’ 100th birthday. He was born on the last day of 1899, so Mexico chose the year 2000 to celebrate the centennial.

“I suggested Revueltas’ music to the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra,” [she says,] “and I always will – or [the music of] Alberto Ginastera from Argentina – but the orchestra had other ideas, and wanted me to conduct Haydn, Mozart, and Tschaikovsky. I agreed easily, and did not push Revueltas.”

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra representative Helena Ahonen remembers the proposal for Revueltas: “The program was locked in when we secured Gisèle Ben-Dor. The association with her was so nice that we will surely invite her back, and next time there will be room for Revueltas.”

Ben-Dor became acquainted with Revueltas only eight years ago, when she was asked to conduct “Sensemaya,” Revueltas’ most famous orchestral work.

Near Los Angeles in tiny Santa Barbara, Ben-Dor only recently directed a four-day festival of Revueltas’ music, the first outside Mexico. The Santa Barbara Symphony’s talented director had almost full-page coverage in the Los Angeles Times, with numerous sidebars.

With the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra, Gisèle Ben-Dor has recorded Revueltas’ last work, the ballet music of “La Coronela” (The Lady Colonel).

“When we record Revueltas,” [she says,] “I will stress quality over quantity. The famed ‘Sensemaya’ has been recorded many times.”

“Sensemaya” (Snake-Killing Song), recorded by Salonen, is an enticement. Ben-Dor is familiar with the recording and treasures it.

“The Los Angeles Philharmonic is the first top orchestra to record Revueltas,” [she says.] Salonen and his orchestra have brought to the public much-needed exposure to Revueltas’ music.”

In Uruguay, the country of her birth, Ben-Dor learned to play the piano, and fell in love with Latin-American popular music. To play it, she prcured a guitar, and began playing left-handed without changing the position of the strings, which were thus upside-down; and to this day, that is how she plays the guitar.

In 1973, the family moved to Israel, where Ben-Dor continued her musical education. She received her diploma as a conductor from Yale University in the U.S., where she had studied for two years.

“The quality of America’s young culture is open-heartedness,” [she says,] “therefore even as a woman I had no problem performing.”

The bad part of America’s young culture is a lack of recognition for their own popular music.

[Ben-Dor states:] “If an American composer uses America’s classical music – that is, jazz – he is not taken seriously. European music is always taken seriously, even though it may have been popular music or folk music.”

Gisèle Ben-Dor is taking a stand against that [attitude], and wishes that music education would be brought back into [U.S.] schools.

FYI:

The man who had time
Silvestre Revueltas in Santa Barbara

Departed prematurely at the age of 40, Silvestre Revueltas’ legacy to posterity consists of forty scores of sarcastic and cubist inspiration. His reputation, however, is submerged in an ocean of misunderstanding. Sixty years later, what has remained of this non-conformist’s music?

“Rest, my brother, your journey is over … the American stars are now your homeland”. Was Pablo Neruda intent in immortalizing the Mexcian musician with this eulogy, the day after Silvestre Revueltas’ death, on October 5, 1940? “From this day on, the entire Earth shall be your home”, said Neruda before the dedication: “To Silvestre Revueltas of Mexico, in death”.

Despite this tribute from a Nobel Prize in Literature, posterity has been slow in recognizing, or even acknowledging Revueltas. A Festival in his honor allowed us to revisit his contribution. For the centenary of his birth, conductor Gisèle Ben-Dor scheduled the composer’s major works in Santa Barbara. Thus, the Revueltas Festival was born of the inveterate will of Gisèle Ben-Dor and the enthusiastic work of an entire community. In four days, there were nine concerts to discover all of Revueltas’ facets.

Originally from Uruguay, Gisèle Ben-Dor has long championed the works of Latin American composers. Since becoming Music Director of the Santa Barbara Symphony in 1994, she has become the convincing advocate of Arturo Marquez, Miguel del Aguila, Mario Lavista, Leonardo Velasquez, Roberto Rodriguez, Javier Alvarez, Gabriela Ortiz and, especially, Alberto Ginastera, Villa Lobos, and, of course, Silvestre Revueltas, whose last score, “La Coronela”, she conducted in a world premiere recording. It is not easy to restore a composer’s image, having died sixty years ago, scarcely known and seldom played outside of his own country. Even here (in the United States), the social walls do not allow the Mexican community – significant in Santa Barbara – to overcome the barriers which separate it from the event, or to create a populist, welcomed audience. Only the free family concert attracted young Mexicans, thanks to the Espiral Puppet Theatre of Mexico, a historic ensemble for whome Revueltas wrote the delightful Sensemaya (1937). The success with this large audience provided an element of feed-back. Elsewhere, at the Arlington Theatre (of Hispanic inspiration), the evening attracted a very large audience composed essentially of elderly Americans. After Villa Lobos’ American premiere of “Amerindia”, conducted by Gisèle Ben-Dor, it was the projection of the celebrated film “Redes” (“Nets”) by Fred Zimmerman, accompanied live by the SBS, which provided the most striking experience. The score combines urban polyrhythmic music and popular styles like “Mariachi”, where trumpets, clarinets and tuba play an essential role. The dramatic power of the music in “Redes” surpasses that of other film scores, such as “Vamonos con Pancho Villa” or “La Noche de los Mayas”. In these cases, it would be interesting to judge the impact of the music by juxtaposing the ensemble as a big symphony.

The attending musicologists, specializing in Revueltas, communicated their surprise that the spiritual connection between Revueltas, Poulenc, Weill or Varese is never mentioned. Another forte of the Festival was an evening dedicated to Revueltas’ chamber music. “Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca” (1936) is a passionate score, as much as Cuauhnahuac (1931), and particularly the delirious “Musica para Charlar” (1938), a resonant episode depicting a train traveling through South California.

Revueltas’ music is a mosaic of ingenious motifs linked by a discourse alternatively fluid and abrupt. His compositions, always surprising, are brief kaleidoscopes. His four string quartets do not exceed a maximum of 37 altogether. This is what makes Revueltas’ posterity a problematic matter, a fact which could be noted at the Festival: a program entirely consecrated to his works would saturate the year with a multitude of ideas. His longest work, “La Coronela”, lasts 35 minutes, but most of his other works do not exceed 10 minutes or so. Revueltas started composing frantically only ten years before his death. He believed he had time . However, as remarked by Octavio Paz, “in Silvestre lived several interlocutors, many passions, numerous abilities, weaknesses, but also refinement. He gave his work a wealth of possibilities and pulsations. The sound of a first chord is like the first ray of light escaping from a world in formation.” What shall the future of Revueltas’ music be, composed as it is, of brief and diverse universes?

One must admire the courage of the organizers and of the musicians, who had to assimilate a mountain of scroes, so as to transmit Gisèle Ben-Dor’s enthusiasm, her talent as a colorist, and her sense of rhythm. Her precise direction reflects all the joy or the tenderness contained in this music. It would be interesteing for a European orchestra to include some of Revueltas’ works in carefully designed programs, where the Mexican composer could be played alongside Varese, Poulenc, and why not, Webern and Berg. Let us not forget that Essa-Pekka Salonen has recorded some Revueltas’ works in a disc which was awarded a “Choc” by Le Monde de la Musique in 1999 …

BIOGRAPHY:

Born on December 31, 1899, in Santiago Papasquiaro, a small town south of Chihuahua. His tahter gave him a violin on his fifth birthday. Silvestre grew up during the strains of the Mexican Revolution, during which music was to find its national identity, just as mural paintings did. This idea will later impregnate his entire work. Revueltas studied violin and composition in Mexico, and later in the US. During the early 20’s, he founded and led an orchestra in San Antonio. Composition was for Revueltas no more than a sporadic excersise then. He first works, “Batik” (1926) and “Piece for Orchestra” (1929) attracted the attention of his friends (including Carlos Chavez), who encouraged him to take a larger step in the art of composition.

At Chavez’ invitation, Revueltas became assistant conductor of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra (1925-35). “Cuauhnahuac”, composed in 1931, was the work that launched a short but intense creative life. In 1937, he traveled to Europe, conducting his music there and championing the republican cause. After a quarrel with Carloz Chavez, Revueltas survived thanks to his movie scores. He died in 1940, of pneumonia aggravated by alcoholism.

A Festival of Discoveries
by Dietrich Burghofer

Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas was born on the last day of the 19th Century, December 31st 1899. He died at the age of 40, on October 7th 1940. Neglected at first, his work has, experienced a renaissance on the occasion of his 100th birthday (see “KLASSIK heute” 1/2000 page 49), thanks to the busy Uruguayan born, American-Israeli conductor Gisèle Ben-Dor, who organized a Revueltas Festival in Santa Barbara to celebrate the anniversary. Gisèle Ben-Dor has led the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra since 1994. She has already recorded Revueltas’ music for the ballet La Coronela with the orchestra for KOCH International two years ago. Santa Barbara, on the sunny coast of California, originally a missionary station led by Franciscan friars, it is a popular touristic attraction today. It was at the Mission where the first chamber music concert took place, with works by Javier Alvarez, Mario Lavista, Leonardo Velasques, Heitor Villa-Lobos and, of course, Silvestre Revueltas. The first work, Javier Alvarez’ string quartet called Metro Chbacano was an ideal appetizer for a two-hour concert of Latin-American music. Eight pieces by Revueltas followed, ranging from his first compositions for piano (1924) to his mature quintet called Two Little Serious Pieces , composed in 1940. These performances allowed a fine appreciation of the development in Revueltas’ compositions. The advanced Three Little Pieces for violin and piano (1932), suggested that the composer could be thought of as the Bela Bartok of Mexican music. The three short movements develop from the rhythmic energy found in traditional Mexcian music. Later chamber msuci works, such as Ocho Por Radio , written in 1933, already present the kind of ensemble capable of generating the typical “Revueltas sound”: trumpet, two woodwinds (clarinet and bassoon), drums and four solo strings. After only a few beats, one feels transported to a Mexican market place. Revueltas’ easy going, joyful music seems, at first, to be a Divertimento, yet it can take a sudden turn, indicating states of deep melancholy, as in the elegiac bassoon solo from Ocho Por Radio .

A special angle: Film music

One of Gisèle Ben-Dor’s chief goals was to present Revueltas’ music films. La Noche de Los Mayas was shown in its original version, with English subtitles, with the orchestral background of the concert work by the same name clearly becoming a Mexican version of the Romeo and Juliet theme. A highlight of the Festival was a three-hour marathon concert with the American premiere of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Tenth Symphony, Amerindia , and the original music to the film Redes (Netze) composed by Revueltas, played the orchestra live with simultaneous showing of the film. The Tenth Symphony of Villa-Lobos, commissioned to celebrate the 400 anniversary of the founding of the city of Sao Paulo, was composed in 1952. This monumental one hour long work – actually an Oratorio for Soli, Choir and Orchestra, fell into oblivion soon after its premiere. It will be available on CD soon, having been recorded by Gisèle Ben-Dor and the Santa Barbara Symphony for Koch International. The film music of Redes , a Mexican film about impoverished fishermen, successfully unionizing against the exploitation by urban businessmen, turned out to the best of Revueltas’ scores. Becoming acquainted with the film and the music allows a deeper view of the composer’s talent and originality: He always succeeds in producing suggestive sounds which directly affect the listener after a few beats. However, in the long run, the music is so strong, that it makes the film almost unnecessary. A ballet performance would be ideal. On the last day of the Festival, Gisèle Ben-Dor conducted two concert including some of the most important ensemble pieces of Revueltas ( Planos, Sensemaya, Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca ). One of the concerts was for children. Little known are the works for the stage, such as Erase un Rey by Luis Cordoba (1940) and the pantomime music to the fairy tale El Renacuajo Paseador by the Colombian poet Rafael Pombo.

One must congratulate Gisèle Ben-Dor for her initiative. She completed an enormous work load, and her courage and energy are to be admired. Even with scarce rehearsal time available, one must remember that the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra is financed almost exclusively by private donations, 21 pieces by Silvestre Revueltas were performed in four days. That’s about half of the complete output of a composer, of whom, according to unanimous opinions of the many journalists traveling from all over the world, more will be said in the future.

A modern mariachi
by Andrew Clements

Michael Nyman and the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen are among Silvestre Revueltas’ biggest fans. And yet, apart from a handful of discs and the occasional appearance in concert programs, his music is hardly known on this side of the Atlantic. In the US and his native Mexico, however, Revueltas’ reputation is slowly being consolidated. His centenary – he was born on New Year’s Eve 1899 – has given the cause a decisive push. The recent Revueltas festival in Santa Barbara included no fewer than 18 of his works alongside other pieces from Latin America, plus screenings of three films for which Revuletas wrote the soundtracks, a puppet show and an exhibition of manuscripts.

The connection between Revueltas and the Californian city is conductor Gisèle Ben-Dor, the Uruguayan-born musical director of the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra, who has fervently championed his cause for years. It’s entirely due to Ben-Dor’s energy and enthusiasm that the Revueltas festival took shape: she planned and conducted all the programs, and brought in the Revueltas scholar Roberto Kolb-Neuhause from Mexico City to prepare new editions for some of the works. It was a real labour of love for all involved, and endlessly fascinating and revealing for those like me who arrived knowing barely a handful of Revueltas’ pieces.

It turns out that the man was as colorful as the music he wrote, and that the few of his pieces that are known – the orchestral Sensemaya, the abrasive Ocho por Radio, the naggingly compulsive Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca – are by no means just inspired flashes in the pan. In the 30s, the decade in which Revueltas composed all his major works (he died of alcoholism and pneumonia in 1940), he was a consistent and distinctive voice in contemporary music. He work, like that of all true originals, remains obstinately unclassifiable.

He’s been called a Mexican Charles Ives, but that’s a misleading parallel. Ives regularly introduced popular songs and hymn tunes into his scores as points of reference, but he regarded himself as a high-art composer. Revueltas’ intentions were very different: he was aiming for a genuine synthesis between popular Mexican music and the Western art-music tradition. The bright, brittle sound of his scoring, the complexity of his rhythms and the acid tang of his harmonies owe as much to the mariachi bands of northern Mexico as they do to the modernist world of Stravinsky, Varese and Bartok, who seem to have been his major European influences. His body of work has a real radical agenda; Revueltas was a revolutionary, and the barriers he sought to break down were musical as well as social.

Born in the Mexican province of Durango, Revueltas trained first as a violinist. He studied in the US and remained there to earn his living conducting and playing in theatre bands. During that time he composed very little; the pieces that he did write have a vaguely French flavour and, apart from the odd flash of sardonic humour, neither show individuality nor hint at the music to come. A little piano study from 1924 has no claim to distinction apart from its title, Tragedy in the Form of a Radish, which pokes not-so-gentle fun at Erik Satie.

It was only after Revueltas returned home in 1929 to become assistant conductor of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra that his creativity exploded and the first distinctive pieces began to appear. With his fellow conductor-composer Carlos Chavez and painters like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, he championed the cause of a nationalist Mexican art. When a left-wing government was elected in Mexico in 1934 he began writing socialist realist music for the state-sponsored cinema. Some of the films haven’t aged well, but Redes (one of Fred Zinnemann’s early successes as a director) was screened in Santa Barbara with Revueltas’ wonderfully paced, humane score played live by the SBSO under Ben-Dor.

In the next five years Revueltas wrote another nine film scores and a stream of concert works; in 1937 he travelled to Spain to join the fight against Franco. He was an alcoholic and possibly a manic depressive, yet his music retained its ebullience to the end of his short life. It” in the clashing mariachi-isms of Ocho, the busy, almost dangerously vapid outer sections of Homenaje, framing a heart-felt lament for Lorca, and the gentle, rather surreal humor of the children’s ballet The Wandering Tadpole.

Revueltas’ pieces, their sound world, their collage-like patterning of themes and essentially non-developmental forms, are products of a genuinely modernist sensibility. He often relies on three-part, fast-slow-fast structures, but within that simple shape the ordering of events and the shifts of perspectives have their own logic, sometimes almost a constructivist basis.

Occasionally the language clings too closely to the models: the recently rediscovered children’s entertainment Once Upon a Time There Was a King, from 1940, is heavily mortgaged to Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale, while the string-orchestra version of Cuauhnahuac (1931) sounds more like Bartok than Revueltas. But a work like Planos (1934), with its sensuous superposition of independent rhythmic and melodic layers, or the explosive, virtuostic Toccata (without a Fugue), a condensed, one-movement violin concert from 1933, or the Two Little Serious Pieces for wind (1940) which are anything but conventionally serious, could only have been written by Revueltas.

Establishing the boundaries of that creative identity was the Santa Barbara festival’s aim. The programmes were sometimes too long (prefacing the screening of Redes with the US premiere of Villa-Lobos’s interminably rambling Tenth Symphony was a mistake) and the performances weren’t always perfect: this is music that requires rhythmic tautness of a very special order, and the kind of technical expertise that makes the hardest passages seem effortless. They they demonstrated inescapably that this is important, devastatingly endearing music. There’s no doubt that alongside the Argentinian Astor Piazzolla, and (on a good day) the Brazilian Villa-Lobos, Revueltas is the most considerable figure that Latin American music has yet produced.

Santa Barbara’s Gisèle Ben-Dor makes her case
by Richard S. Ginell

Until not too long ago, Silvestre Revueltas, the incorrigible, left-leaning, wildly gifted and, alas, alcoholic Mexican composer, languished in the shadow of his onetime friend and eventual rival Carlos Chavez – known mostly, if at all, for the brief, rocking socking tone poem Sensemaya . Euro/North American disdain toward music from the Latin world had something to do with this neglect – and no doubt Revuletas also made powerful enemies during a turbulent life that ended ignominiously and prematurely at age 40.

He was born New Year’s Eve 1899, and would have had a good, bitter last laugh had he lived until his centenary. In Southern California at least, he is becoming a hero to Latinos and anxious marketing types trying to build an audience for classical music from that group; indeed Sensemaya is practically basic repertoire here now. Isa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic put out a decent CD survey of his music (Sony) last year, and Revueltas has gone over well at the Chandler Pavilion and the Hollywood Bowl. Yet it was Santa Barbara that has produced the most impressive Revueltas project so far – a four-day festival of orchestra nad chamber music concerts, lectures, films, exhibits of manuscripts, US premieres – the works – from January 20 to 23.

Gisèle Ben-Dor, the Urugay-born music director of the Santa Barbara Symphony, had pushed for this festival for years, and after accumulating goodwill chits from the local audience while sprinkling increasing amounts of Revueltas ino her programs, she finally went for broke, pulling in several of the small city’s performing arts organizations. She is the most persuasive Revueltas conductor I’ve ever heard, completely in touch with the sarcastic wit, the malicious bite, the bounce of the rhythms, the strong Mexican folk flavor, and in some of the film music, the stirring heroism. She also has a strong constitution; at one point, she led four concerts in a span of roughly 25 hours, two of them virtually back-to-back.

The festival’s final day offered the greatest concentration of music by far, starting with a family concert that banished the old stereotype of easy-listening, spoon-fed warhorses designed for short attention spans. Ben-Dor and a small band of players from the Santa Barbara Symphony delivered such tough little workouts as Planos and the rare, chamber-sized, shortened edition of Sensemaya , both of them without compromise and with especially barbed menace in the latter. She enhanced, but did not sweeten, the deal by sharing the split stage of the aging yet acoustically solid Santa Barbara Junior High Auditorium with shadow dancers Maria and Carmen Solis in Planos , and the colorful, bizarre antics of the Espiral Puppet Theater in Sensemaya . In league with a somewhat confusing display by the puppets, she made some news with the US premiere of the unfinishsed incidental music to Once Upon a Time There Was a King – one of Revuletas’ last works, discovered only in late 1999 – whose nifty rhythmic mockery reminded me of L’Histoire du Soldat . The concluding Wandering Tadpole unleashed more sarcastic humor and polyrhythmic Mexican brio.

Stepping away from Revueltas, but not the Latin agenda, at the Arlington Theater down-town, Ben-Dor led the first US performance of Villa-Lobos’ huge, rambling, restless, unabashedly melodic Symphony No. 10, Amerindia , which takes the composer’s usual lushly foliated mannerisms and multiplies them over a 58-minute span. Seeminly taking his cue from Mahler to embrace an entire world. Villa-Lobos wrote an exotic “Symphony of a Thousand” for the founding of Sao Paulo that could double as a travelog, using a large orchestra, three choruses, three vocal soloists, and a wild tri-lingual text (in Portuguese, Latin, and Tup Indian dialect) punctuated by erotic, wind-swept, wordless choral swoops. Ben-Dor was scheduled to make the first-ever recording of the piece for Koch International here after the festival, and she evidently grasped its vast, buckling dimensions completely, though the Santa Barbara Symphony showed some audible strain.

The gusty, long-winded Villa-Lobos gave way in the second half to the earnestly crusading side of Revueltas with a screening of the 1935 film Redes (or “Nets”), accompanied by a live performance of his reconstructed cures. Along with obvious period agitprop elements – poor Mexican fishermen trying to unionize against greedy middlemen – the film contains striking imagery of the sea and skies, and Revueltas’ first-rate score, one of the most satisfying every written for film, packs a heroic emotional punch. The performance was in almost perfect sync with the film, right down to matching the rhythm of the rowboats.

While the Arlington was packed for this spectacular, only a handful turned out at the junior high for the concluding concert of zesty Revueltas chamber orchestra pieces (it was, after all, a rainy Sunday night before a work day). Ben-Dor and the very good Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra could claim another US premiere with the string orchestra version of the Aztec-flavored Cuauhnahuac – which is quite different from the more common orchestral edition, lengthier by about five minutes, with a quiet ending for solo cello and double bass instead of the razzmatazz orchestral coda. Ben-Dor’s performance was packed with vigorous rhythmic feeling and in the more lyrical pentatonic stretches, a Copland-like sense of vastness.

The more or less familiar Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca was given a bumping, raucous, streetwise performance full of sass and vinegar. Ben-Dor brought out the discordant hijinks in the clownish pratfalls of Troka – Revueltas could be as funny as Shostakovich – and concluded with the homier country scenes and mysterious cues of Musica Para Charlar (from the documentary Ferrocarriles de Baja California ).

As a festival nightcap, the marvelous Mexican percussion group Tambuco delivered some choice, swinging minimalism (Graham Fitkin’s Hook ); a piece for four scrapers played in the physical positions of a string quartet (Leopoldo Novoa’s Sabe como e? ); a surprisingly satisfying piece for three musicians playing a table – or table-six-hands, as it were (Thierry de May’s Musique de Tables ); and a mesmerizing ritual (Eduardo Soto-Millan’s Corazon Sur ) for quartets of drums, woodblocks, cowbells, and crotales.

I’m convinced that the current mushrooming interest in Latin music of all idioms, coupled with burgeoning Latino population statistics, is going to produce a bumper crop of Latin American classical music devotees, soon. And with this triumphant Revueltas Festival, along with recordings like 1998’s sizzling Conifer disc of Ginastera’s complete Estancia , Gisèle Ben-Dor promises to be a major player in that ballpark.

The Artists
The Silvestre Revueltas Music Festival

Silvestre Revueltas Music Festival
100th Birthday Celebration

(Santa Barbara, CA) – Santa Barbara, California is the location for a four-day music festival to celebrate the 100th birthday of Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. Classic films, lectures, manuscripts, live chamber and symphonic music will be held at various locations.

Three histroic Mexican films for which Revueltas composed the music scores will be shown with English subtitles: Vamonos Con Pancho Villa (1933); La Noche de Los Mayas (1939); and Redes (1935). Redes , which translates as fishermen’s “nets,” will be shown with the Santa Barbara Symphony playing the lives film score under the music direction of conductor Gisèle Ben-Dor. It will be a national premiere of this film-orchestra performance.

Ben-Dor is the creator and artistic director of the festival.

The festival includes lectures by Professor Roberto Kolb-Neuhaus of the University of Mexico, a renown Revueltas scholar; and a number of orchestral and chamber works performing throughout Santa Barbara. A special youth concert featuring Esprial , a puppet theater from Mexico, will be held on Sunday. These puppets were designed specifically for a performance to Revueltas compositions. They have never performed in the United States.

In addition, Tambuco , a highly acclaimed and award-winning Mexican percussion quartet will perform at the youth concert and with the chamber orchestra at their performance.

The musical repertoire for this festival includes not only the score from Redes , but Musica Para Charlar (Ferrocarriles de Baja Califorania), Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca, Cuauhnahuac (U.S. premiere), Toccata, Ocho Por Radio, Troka, Four Little Pieces, Two Little Serious Pieces, Quartet No. 2 (Magueyes), Quartet No.4 (Musica de Feria), Sensemaya, Planos, The Wandering Tadpole, Once upon a time there was a King (U.S. Premiere), Tragedia en Forma de Rabano (worth of youth), Coqueta Para Genio, Three Pieces For Violin and Piano, and Batik .

Other Latin American composers include Arturo Marquez ( Sarabandeo ), Miguel del Aguila ( Clocks ), Mario Lavista ( Cinco Danzas Breves ), Javier Alvarez ( Metro Chabacano ), Heitor Villa-Lobos ( Symphony Amerindia ) and Quartet No.5 , and Gabriela Ortiz.

In addition, the festival will have manuscripts, photos and music scores of Revueltas on display at the Santa Barbara Public Library and the Karpeles Manuscript Library.

Tapes, books and CDs will be available, including the Santa Barbara Symphony’s world premiere recording of La Coronela , Itinerarios and Colorines .

Although noted by many as one of the 20th Century’s greatest composers – compared frequently to Manuel De Falla and Copland – Revueltas is perhaps one of the least known to serious music and film audiences.

Born in Mexico on December 31, 1899, Revueltas died at the age of 40, after a prolific decade of creativity and compositional activity that reflects the modernism and nationalism of that period in the Americas. Thirty plus pieces in approximately ten years encompass many large orchestral scores, a half dozen film scores, music for smaller ensembles, four string quartets and songs.

Revueltas’ compositions are often described as original and passionate. They are universal in scope, as well as deeply inspired by the folklore roots of Mexico. He studied and performed in Mexico and the United States.

Revueltas also toured and performed throughout Spain during their Civil War, and was deeply moved by it. Revueltas wrote extensive letters and essays on his reflections of life, war and music. He identified strongly with the artist Vincent Van Gogh, and described how he dreamed of music as “color, sculpture and movement.”

The festival is being sponsored in part by The Mexican Cultural Institute, LA; The Mexican Consulate, Oxnard; The University of California, Santa Barbara, Music Department and Arts and Lectures; The Santa Barbara Symphony, the Santa Barbara Public Library, the Karpeles Manuscript Library, the Santa Barbara Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Hispanic Business Council of the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce, Bruce and David Corwin/Metropolitan Theatres Corporation and Peermusic Classical Music. Seats are limited. Prices vary.

Press photos are available.

Revueltas Centennial To Be Celebrated in Santa Barbara, CA, January 20-23
Peermusic Classical

u.s. premieres in festival that Includes film, puppetry, orchestral and chamber music, Lectures and displays of manuscripts

The centennial of Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940), the “great free spirit of Mexican music”, will be honored in a four-day festival in Santa Barbara, California next month. Revueltas’ exhilarating music ranges from the evocation of the pre-Columbian era to the sounds of modern Mexico City street bands, leavened with his characteristic humor. Gisele Ben-Dor, artistic director of the festival, has made Revueltas something of a crusade in recent years, in performances with the Santa Barbara Symphony and on a Koch International CD. The festival will reveal the breadth of Revueltas’ composition, presenting works for the concert hall, film scores, and music for children. Highlights of the festival:

* The U.S. premiere of the film Redes in full screen projection with live orchestra. Redes (“Nets,” 1935) is recognized as Revueltas’ greatest film score. Directed by Fred Zinneman with photography by Paul Strand, the 70 minute film depicts the strife of poor fishermen in a Mexican Gulf Coast village, drawing from Revueltas some of his most powerful and affecting music. The films Vámonos con Pancho Villa (1936) and La noche de los Mayas (1939) will also be shown during the festival; all are with English subtitles.

* First U.S. performances by Mexico’s Espiral puppet theater, whose founder worked with Revueltas himself. Espiral will present a family program including Revueltas’ chamber works Sensemayá, Planos, The Wandering Tadpole, and Once Upon a Time There Was a King. The award-winning Mexican percussion ensemble, Tambuco will share the musical side of the program with the festival’s chamber ensemble. All films with English subtitles.

* Chamber orchestra and ensemble concerts to include Música para charlar (“Chit-chat music”) and the chamber works Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca, Tocata (“Homage to Federico Garcia Lorca”), Ocho por radio (“Eight x Radio”), the 2nd and 4th String Quartets, Cuauhnáhuac, and the u.s. premieres of Tragedia en forma de Rábano (“Tragedy in the Form of a Radish”[!]), and Coqueta para Genio, an endearment for the composer’s daughter. Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Symphony No.10 and chamber works by contemporary Latin American composers Miguel del Aguila, Javier Alvarez, Mario Lavista, Arturo Márquez, and Gabriela Ortiz will round out the festival.

* On the scholarly side: Roberto Kolb Neuhaus, author of the first comprehensive catalog of Revueltas’ works and artistic director of the ensemble Camerata de las Americas, will speak about Redes and Cuauhnáhuac- Professor Kolb’s research into Revueltas’ manuscripts has resulted in a recent Dorian CD of chamber music premieres. Throughout the festival, manuscripts of Revueltas’ works will be on display at the Santa Barbara Public Library and the Karpeles Manuscript Library.

Silvestre Revuelta s was born on the very eve of the 20th century, on December 31, 1899. After early training as a violinist, he concentrated on conducting and composition. At Carlos Chávez’s invitation, he became Assistant Conductor of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra. (1929-1935) and taught violin and composition at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City, also conducting the Conservatory Orchestra. In 1937 he conducted several of his orchestral works in Spain, lending his support to the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War. In October 1940, just 40 years old, he succumbed to pneumonia aggravated by alcoholism. In his last decade, Revueltas was astonishingly productive, writing almost 40 works – including 6 for full orchestra and 8 film scores – in a mature, vitally individual voice.

Recent performances and recordings have redressed the lack of attention given Revueltas’ music in the decades since his death. His monumental La Noche de los Mayas, whose ritualistic finale requires 11 percussionists, has thrilled audiences of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, and the American Composers Orchestra. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s all Revueltas CD on Sony Classical, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting, has just won the prestigious Diapason d’Or prize for recorded symphonic music in 1999. Also on the disk are Sensemayá and Ventanas for orchestra, and chamber works including, Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca. On Koch International Classics, Gisele Ben-Dor leads the Santa Barbara Symphony and English Chamber Orchestra in Revueltas’ last work La Coronela, along with orchestral works Itinerarios and Colorines. And on Dorian, La Camerata, conducted by Enrique Diemecke, presents world premiere recordings of Sensemayá and Cuauhnáhuac in chamber versions recently prepared by Roberto Kolb.

Sponsors of the Revueltas Festival include The Mexican Cultural Institute, Los Angeles; The Mexican Consulate, Oxnard; The University of California, Santa Barbara Music Department; The Santa Barbara Symphony; The Santa Barbara Public Library; the Karpeles Manuscript Library; the Santa Barbara Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; and Bruce and David Corwin/Metropolitan Theatres Corporation.

The Artists
The Silvestre Revueltas Music Festival

Gisèle Ben-Dor
Artistic Director

Gisèle Ben-Dor, the Artistic Director of the Revueltas Festival, is the Music Director of the Santa Barbara Symphony and the Boston Pro-Arte Chamber Orchestra. A long time champion of Latin American composers, her performances and recordings have received wide critical acclaim.

Her vision of a festival of Silvestre Revueltas’ music to celebrate his 100th anniversary originated several years ago. Most recently, she conducted the Santa Barbara Symphony in Sensemaya and La Noche de los Mayas, and the orchestra’s highly praised first recording includes the world premiere of Revueltas’ final work, La Coronela, as well as Itinerarios and Colorines. Born and raised in Uruguay, Ms. Ben-Dor frequently appears as guest conductor with major orchestras worldwide, and has recorded several world premieres of Alberto Ginastera for BMG and Koch.

Tambuco

Noted by many as one of the 20th Century’s most original composers, Silvestre Revueltas is frequently compared to Manuel de Falla, Charles Ives and Aaron Copland, but he has long been relegated to the pantheon of tragic cult figures. Born in Mexico on December 31, 1899, Revueltas died on October 5, 1940, following a prolific decade of creativity and compositional activity.

Revueltas’ music reflects his genius, passion and the modernism and nationalism of that period in the Americas, also exemplified by composers such as Alberto Ginastera in ARgentina and Heitor Villa-Lobos in Brazil. The Mexican composer’s dynamic music is deeply inspired by the folklore and instruments of Latin America, but it is universal in scope, and expresses the individual voice of a unique artistic personality.

Drawing on Mexican folk-song without actually quoting it, Revueltas’ mature works weave folk-type melodies into a gaudy instrumental fabric. His music is also ripe with bold, vigorous rhythms, counterpoint and rich undercurrent of sardonic humor, often combined with soul-searching melodies.

Revueltas led an equally rich, though ultimately tragic personal life. An active violinist, he toured Spain during the Civil War. As a conductor he led the orchestras of Mexico City, San Antonio, Texas and Mobile, Alabama. Composer and novelist Paul Bowles called Revueltas the “Mexican Falla” in that both managed to incorporate the music of the streets and taverns and dress it for the concert hall with little of the purity lost.

Revueltas’ significance is perhaps likened to that of Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Embodied in his music, reaching beyond himself or Mexico, are the struggles of any nation and the spirit of the human condition.

Espiral Puppet Theatre

The Esprial Puppet Theatre is an award-winning puppet troupe of Mexico. It was founded by children’s author and teacher, Mireya Cueto, who was born in Mexico City in 1922. An admirer of Silvestre Revueltas, she wrote scripts and librettos to some of his music. She and her son, Pablo, founded Tinglado, the puppet and actors’ theater company in Mexico.

Musically Speaking

Professor Roberto Kolb-Neuhaus, renowned Revueltas scholar at the University of Mexico, lectures on Revueltas’ first major orchestral piece, Cuauhnahuac of 1930, and his musical score for the 1935 film, Redes. Professor Kolb-Neuhaus has lectured around the world and has written numerous academic papers and books on the extraordinary Mexican composer.

Schedule of Events
The Silvestre Revueltas Music Festival

January 20-23

Revueltas Manuscripts on Display at Karpeles Manuscript Library Santa Barbara : Public Library – Free

Thursday, January 20, 3pm

Lecture by Professor Roberto Kolb-Neuhaus

Revueltas Scholar, University of Mexico
Topic: Cuauhnahuac
at Geiringer Hall, Music Building, UCSB – Free

Thursday, January 20, 4pm

String Quartet Concert
Revueltas , Quartet No.2 (Magueyes),
Quartet No.4 (Musica de Feria)
Heitor Villa-Lobos : Quartet No.5
Miguel del Aguila : Clocks
at Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, Music Building, UCSB – Free

Friday, January 21, 1pm

Chamber Concert
Conductor, Gisèle Ben-Dor
Revueltas : Toccata, Ocho Por Radio, Four Little Pieces, Two Little Serious Pieces, Tragedia en Forma de Rabano, Coqueta Para Genio, Three Little Pieces for Violin and Piano, Batik.
Arturo Marquez : Sarabandeo
Mario Lavista : Cinco Danzas Breves
Javier Alvarez : Metro Chabacano
at Friar’s Lounge, Old Mission, $10 admission, Benefit the Boys and Girls Clubs, of Santa Barbara

Friday, January 21, 8:00 pm

Film: Vamonos Con Pancho Villa
at Arts and Lectures, Campbell Hall, UCSB
Tickets $5 Student, $6 Public

Saturday, January 22, 10am

Film: La Noche de Los Mayas
at Fiesta 5 Theatre
Tickets $5

Saturday, January 22, Noon

Luncheon and Lecture
Santa Barbara Symphony League Presents
Professor Roberto Kolb-Neuhaus
Topic: Redes
at Cafe Buenos Aires, $20 includes lunch.

Saturday, January 22, 8pm

Santa Barbara Symphony
Redes : Film projection with live orchestra performance of Revueltas’ score
Heitor Villa-Lobos : Symphony No.10, “Amerindia” (U.S. Premiere)
Conductor, Gisèle Ben-Dor
at Arlington Theater
Ticket prices from $19-$40

Sunday, January 23, 1pm

Santa Barbara Symphony Family Concert
“Espiral” Puppet Theater
Tambuco Percussion Quartet
Conductor, Gisèle Ben-Dor
Revueltas : Sensemaya, Planos, The Wandering Tadpole, Once upon a time there was a King (U.S. Premiere)
at Santa Barbara Jr. High Auditorium
Free

Sunday, January 23, 3pm

Santa Barbara Symphony
(Repeat of Saturday’s Performance)
at Arlington Theater
Ticket prices from $19-$40

Sunday, January 23, 8pm

Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra (Heiichiro Ohyama, Music Director)
Tambuco Percussion Quartet
Conductor, Gisèle Ben-Dor
Revueltas : Cuauhnahuac (U.S. Premiere, Troka, Musica Para Charlar (Ferrocarriles de Baja California)
Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca
at Santa Barbara Jr. High Auditorium
$10 admission

Repertoire
The Silvestre Revueltas Music Festival

Revueltas

Redes, (Film projection with live orchestra performance – U.S. Premiere), Cuauhnahuac (U.S. Premiere), Troka, Musica Para Charlar (Ferrocarriles de Baja California), Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca, Sensemaya, Planos, The Wandering Tadpole, Once upon a time there was a King (U.S. Premiere), Toccata, Ocho Por Radio, Four Little Pieces, Two Little Serious Pieces, Tragedia en Forma de Rabano, Coqueta Para Genio, Three Little Pieces for Violin and Piano, Batik, Quartet No.2 (Magueyes), Quartet No.4 (Musica de Feria).

Other Latin-American Composers’ Music

Heitor Villa-Lobos: Symphony No. 10, “Amerindia” (U.S. Premiere, to be recorded by the S.B. Symphony), Quartet No. 5 and Bachianas brasileiras No.6. Miguel del Aguila: Clocks. Leonardo Velazquez, Variaciones for clarinet and piano. Mario Lavista: Cinco Danzas Breves. Javier Alvarez: Metro Chabacano.

Espiral Puppet Theater