Joly Braga Santos was born in Lisbon in 1924 and died in 1988 at the height of his musical creativity. After studying violin and composition at the National Conservatory of Lisbon, became a student of Luis de Freitas Branco (1890-1955), the leading Portuguese composer of the previous generation.
After World War II, he went abroad for studying orchestral conducting with Hermann Sherchen and Antonino Votto, as well as composition with Virgilio Mortari. Although from a geographic area and a culture, Latin, little inclined to prefer the symphonic genre, his innate talents led him to orchestrate precisely in that direction, where he learned to vent more convincingly to his musical language, based on a strong musical and dramatic architecture, guided by an instinct natural structural development, without ignoring long melodic phrases of the most exquisite "Mediterranean". In his early works, the composer began to show a modal trend, motivated by the desire to establish a connection between contemporary music and the golden age of Portuguese music: the Renaissance. The first four symphonies, which occur very rapidly (in a time frame of between 22 and 27 years of age) met with immediate success. Other works from this period are the Concerto for Strings, Variations on a theme the Alentejo, and three symphony Overtures.
Following closely the works of composers of the post-war Europe, his style became, from 1960 onwards, more color and less traditional form. To this period belong the Three Symphonic Sketches, the Sinfonietta, the Requiem and his last two symphonies, the 5 and 6.
Joly Braga Santos has also written three operas, chamber music for a wide range of instruments and ensembles, soundtracks, and many choral works on poems by classic and modern poets Portuguese and English as Camões, Antero de Quental, Teixeira de Pascoaes, Fernando Pessoa, Garcilaso de la Vega, Rosalia de Castro and Antonio Machado.
Most of his works have been recorded since the early seventies, the Portuguese label Strauss SP, more recently, the Naxos, Marco Polo under the label, Braga Santos paid tribute to a tribute more comprehensive by including all symphonies and some of his finest orchestral works, under the direction of Alvaro Cassuto, fellow author and strong advocate of his music.
To give a more organic style of composition, I suggest you listen to the full Second Symphony in B minor, written in 1947 and divided into four movements: I.
Largo - Allegro energetic and passionate;
II. Not too slowly;
III. Allegretto pastorale;
IV. Lento, Allegro, Epilogo (Lento).
Nel 2001, all'uscita della presente registrazione in cd, David Hurwitz si espresse in questi termini:
"Joly Braga Santos' Second Symphony, at 48 minutes, has all of the urgency and ambition of a young man's enthusiastic revelry in writing for a really large orchestra. The composer was all of 23 when he wrote it, and early or not, the piece sustains its length with little apparent effort. As usual in the first four symphonies, the influences of Vaughan Williams and Respighi aren't too far away, but that's all they are. There's no mistaking a tremendous individual talent at work here. Just listen to the gorgeous slow movement--melodically distinctive magnificently and scored (the evocative tail features a timpani duet under mysterious ethereal strings). Even the final, a highly sectional amalgam of slow introduction, allegro, fugue, and slow epilogue leading to a grand conclusion, hangs together remarkably well, borne on the wings of the composer's unflagging inspiration. "
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is directed by Alvaro Cassuto.
I would not, however, entirely my duty to blind if this intervention, mostly in Braga Santos offer without listening to the fourth movement (Lento) of his Fourth Symphony (1950), which so hit me from the first approach because of its freshness and its positive force, even a little ' naive, but surely impact. In the version proposed here, the contribution of the chorus Cassuto waiver ad libitum, provided by the author in the alternative version, closed with a hymn to youth, "which uses the solemn sweetness of the theme which concludes the symphony. Cassuto with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, however, makes it full justice to the composition, even without special effects.
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