1114 – The Sound Factory

A FÁBRICA DOS SONS and PLUHARLIEDER

The differences of the similitude in a composer equal to himself

This CD includes two rather peculiar pieces with symphonic music of António Victorino D’Almeida. Actually the analogies between the two compositions aren’t many, clearly differentiated by their genesis and purposes. However, the best way of pointing out these differences is to comprehend the similitude, evinced by the means of two aspects:

1) The presence of human voice

A Fábrica dos Sons presents the voice of Maria de Medeiros with the discursive subtlety and perfect diction of the Portuguese language which characterize the oral splendour of the prestigious actress and director. In Pluharlieder, written in German, we enjoy the telluric strength and expressive intensity of Erika Pluhar, one of the biggest symbols of her country in the sphere of the Austrian traditional song and of the “café-concerto”.

The Pluharlieder, as the name itself tells us, associates the symphonic piece to the author of the texts and its vocal performer. A Fábrica dos Sons, on the contrary, is or seems to be independent from the interpreter’s identity, generally speaking.
However, this specific characteristic conceals a crucial analogy. Both voices are feminine and are also strongly related to the composer. Maria de Medeiros is his daughter and Erika Pluhar is his artistic partenaire since decades in shows all over the world.

2) The endogenous characteristics of the “orchestral palette”

A Fábrica dos Sons is clearly an example of programmatic music. The symphonic score describes and analyzes the alternatives of a text which the listener gets to know in advance.
Pluharlieder is a song cycle with symphonic accompaniment. Both text and music work together as a whole of simultaneous perception.
In A Fábrica dos Sons the aesthetics oscillates between the nostalgic atmosphere related to the circus, present in the movies of Charlot, and the controlled chaos which characterizes some of the pioneer music of our days, with the addition of themes in different tonalities, similar to the first experiences of Charles Ives in the beginning of the twentieth century.
The score of Pluharlieder, on the contrary, is clearly tonal but in the most “modern” and flexible sense of the word.
A Fábrica de Sons hovers over the unique atmosphere of the live accompaniments in the shows of silent movies and of original music in the beginning of movies with sound. Even when the complexity level drives the piece away from the stylistic origins which inspired it, the Anglo-American “scent” of the Twenties persists. This is a characteristic of the drama in a “Chaplin and industrial style” which the hilarious text describes.
On the other hand, Pluharlieder is included on the Germanic urban popular song, somewhere between Wiener Kabaret and the musical “drapery” of Kurt Weill for the dramaturgy of Brecht.
In a well succeeded gesture of prestidigitation, all the differences make a similitude noticeable, residing mainly in the endogenous characteristics of the “orchestral palette”. What I want to say is that these two pieces so different from each other have in common a flawless technical efficacy in their orchestration.
In these scores there is a perfect utilization of the timber and an undeniable respect for the “physiology” of each instrumental sector (once again, thank you for the penetrating expression that combines the logic of Biology with Music, Fernando Lopes Graça). The soloistic interventions are always in the right tessitura, and allow each instrument to breathe freely and express itself in its own musical language. Great talented passages can be somewhat difficult but never impossible. The musical composition does not ask for impossible things, and searches for the effects where they present the best results.
The art of orchestrating, considered by many as a science, requires a deep knowledge of workshop, this is, professionalism without flaws. If, to this characteristic, we add nobility in the melodic conducting, intelligence to perform the arrangements, precision on what concerns the counterpoint, and balance of the whole, we will be in the presence of a true symphonic composer. And that is the essence of this CD.

In these two pieces, António Victorino D’Almeida manages to preserve his creativity, distancing himself from the experimentalist radicalism, and the temptation of the “easy way out”. It is implied in them the enigmatic old saying in
extremis, medium, attested by the subtle humour of the famous Argentine Oliverio Girondo.
António Victorino D’Almeida is once more related to the so-called “isms”. Owner and master of a musical experience of five decades, he does not renounce his creative freedom defended with courage in his youth and strongly developed throughout his career, where everything he has done and still does was and always will be honest, controversial, and therefore magnificent. However, there are two unquestionable aspects: the integrity of his technical training inherent to the distinguished professors who guided his studies, and his artistic fecundity, materialized in a repertoire of more than 180 pieces.
António Victorino D’Almeida is acknowledged not only for its multidisciplinary action as a pianist, writer, television programmes director, historian and orchestra director, but above all for being a mature composer at the height of its creativity. He is indeed an obligatory figure when it comes to analyze the evolution of Portuguese musical modernity.

Alejandro Erlich Oliva
Lisbon, May of 2004

(Translation: Odete Martins)