Monteiro Ventures into Less Familiar Repertoire

courtesy of Etcetera Records

According to my records, I have been following recordings made by violinist Bruno Monteiro and pianist João Paulo Santos since I wrote about their Brilliant Classics album of the complete music for violin and piano composed by Karol Szymanowski in April of 2015. Since that time Monteiro has led me into domains of repertoire about which I knew little, if anything. His latest album, released by Etcetera Records, amounts to a “sandwich” of “familiar meat” enclosed by two “slices” of the unfamiliar.

This is the second album he has recorded after moving from Brilliant Classics to Etcetera Records. As I had observed when I wrote about his first Etcetera release of music for violin and piano by Igor Stravinsky, this is a bit disadvantageous for those interested in Monteiro’s recordings. According to Google, these albums are available on the Web only through the Etcetera Web site. Fortunately, an Etcetera Web page for purchasing Monteiro’s latest album shows up on a Google search. However, Etcetera is based in Belgium, meaning that payment is in euros; and, given that pandemic conditions still prevail, it is unclear how efficient delivery will be.

This is unfortunate, since the album is a delightful journey of discovery. The “familiar meat” of the “sandwich” is Maurice Ravel’s second violin sonata in the key of G major, a composition that continues to receive far less attention than it deserves. It is followed by another “second sonata,” this one composed by Heitor Villa-Lobos in 1914. (The composer actually called this composition a “sonate-fantaisie.”) The Brazilian Villa-Lobos is complemented by the opening selection by the Portuguese composer Luís de Freitas Branco, the first of his two violin sonatas, composed in 1907.

The Villa-Lobos sonata is likely to be as much of a journey of discovery as is the Freitas Branco sonata. He had recently married the pianist Lucília Guimarães; and, since he had not learned to play piano himself, he was probably influenced by both her technique and her style. That said, the music is unlikely to remind most listeners of the more familiar works in the Villa-Lobos catalog, making the composition an engaging journey of discovery.

The Freitas Branco sonata, on the other hand, is more difficult to classify. He studied music in both Berlin and Paris; and his best-known teacher (at least according to his Wikipedia page) was Engelbert Humperdinck. My own first encounter with the first measures of this music left me wondering if he had been familiar with César Frank’s A major violin sonata. Nevertheless, Freitas Branco definitely forges his own path while respecting the overall framework of a four-movement sonata; and Monteiro’s performance left me curious about what other pieces are lurking in this Portuguese composer’s catalog.