Neil Thomson

Neil Thomson, Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra – Santoro: Symphonies Nos. 11, 12 & Other Orchestral Works (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:15 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

Claudio Santoro’s prolific output includes a cycle of 14 symphonies that is widely recognised as the most significant of its kind from Brazil. All of the works in this programme come from Santoro’s remarkable final decade, in which he allied more traditional and eclectic styles to his earlier experiments.

Both the Concerto grosso and the Three Fragments on B.A.C.H. were written for student orchestras, but are nonetheless substantial pieces which show his command of writing for strings. The Eleventh Symphony is one of the densest and most dramatic of the cycle, its finale exploding into an evocation of the opening of Brahms’ First Symphony, while the Twelfth Symphony is an unusual “sinfonia concertante” for nine soloists and orchestra.
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Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra, Neil Thomson – Santoro: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 “Brasília” (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:55 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Naxos

Claudio Santoro was one of Brazil’s most eminent and influential composers. Over a 50-year period, he wrote a cycle of fourteen symphonies that is widely acclaimed as the most significant cycle of its kind ever written in Brazil. The two selected works in this inaugural volume of the first complete recording of his symphonies focus on the 1950s, a period when Santoro sought a more direct and communicative idiom using Brazilian elements. His use of folk-based material is nonetheless highly creative, sometimes indeed abstract, as in key moments of Symphony No. 5. Symphony No. 7 is one of his most complex and intense works, a celebration of his country’s new capital Brasília in music of striking modernity.
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