3ª Sinfonia
by Luiz de Freitas Branco (1890 - 1955)
Ref. ava080259
Branco's symphonies follow the pattern initiated by Franck and the French school, usually featuring cyclically recurring themes and a late-Romantic, Wagnerian harmonic idiom. However, the Third Symphony (1944) shows chromaticism gradually being replaced by something more interesting: a harder-edged sonority and a bolder use of diatonic dissonance. The result is quite individual and often very ear-catching. Indeed, if this 46-minute piece has any weakness, it's that it is so profligate of material, with each theme having its own shape, scoring, and tempo, that the various movements seem to flow into one another without strong contrasts. Still, such musical abundance hardly can be faulted when the results are so enjoyable.
David Hurwitz