Composer(s): Mendonça, Vasco
Conductor(s): Shwartz, Benjamin
Orchestra(s): Gulbenkian Orchestra
Artist(s): Muraro, Roger
Label: Naxos
Genre: Concerto; Orchestral
Catalogue No: 8.579025
Barcode: 747313902576
Release Date: 11/2019

MENDONÇA, V.: Step Right Up / Group Together, Avoid Speech / Unanswerable Light (Muraro, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Shwartz)

Portuguese composer Vasco Mendonça regards this portrait album as a letter to himself—written over time and with different chapters that throw light on his long-standing obsessions with drama, ritual and precision mechanism. Group Together, Avoid Speech highlights the string and woodwind principals of the wonderful Gulbenkian Orchestra to create ‘a Baroque concerto grosso on steroids’, while Unanswerable Light is a memorial to a friend and a meditation on fury and loss. The piano concerto Step Right Up is ‘a ritual celebration between the most incredible music box—the orchestra—and the most beautiful sound machine—the piano.’