Carl Van Vechten’s 1937 portrait photograph of Carlos Chávez (from the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
A little over two weeks ago Sony Classical released a seven-CD box set entitled Carlos Chávez: The Complete Columbia Album Collection. Anyone consulting the Wikipedia Web page that lists Chávez’ compositions will quickly realize that this is an account of the Chávez canon that is far less than modest, particularly after discovering that not all of the tracks are Chávez compositions. On the other hand Chávez served as conductor for the entire content. All but the last of the CDs were recorded in Mexico City. On the last CD Chávez conducts the London Symphony Orchestra at the Abbey Road studios in London.
I first became aware of Chávez when I was in secondary school, most likely as a result of one of Leonard Bernstein’s television programs. For the better part of my life, I was aware of little more than the second of Chávez’ six symphonies, given the title “Sinfonía india,” the latter word picking up on Christopher Columbus, rather than Asia. However, my only opportunity to write about the performance of his music took place in April of 2018, when violinist Luosha Fang and pianist Allegra Chapman performed his 1924 sonatina as part of the Bard Music West festival entitled The World of Henry Cowell. Where recordings are concerned, during my tenure with Examiner.com, I wrote about the reissue of Eduardo Mata’s recordings of all six of the symphonies and the Cedille recording of Chávez’ piano concerto with Jorge Federico Osorio as soloist with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto. In the new box set, that ensemble accounts for the six symphonies and the violin concerto, performed with soloist Henryk Szeryng.
The tracks that are not composed by Chávez are all traditional Mexican tunes. The most familiar of these is “La paloma azul” (the blue dove), which Chávez arranged for chorus and orchestra. Any listener familiar with Aaron Copland’s “El Salón México” will probably recognize the theme before the first measure has elapsed.
On the other hand it would be fair to say that any Columbia recording of Copland comes across as far more polished than any of the recordings made in Mexico City. There are any number of reasons why this might be the case. I shall not enumerate them, nor shall I make any conjectures. Suffice it to say that the London Symphony Orchestra accounts for the most disciplined performances, all of which will be found on the final CD.
The second most disciplined performances are to be found on the penultimate CD. This accounts for three of the four compositions given the title “Soli.” The first of these is scored for oboe, clarinet, and trumpet. This is followed by the fourth, performed by horn, trumpet, and trombone. The CD then concludes with the second, scored for the “usual” wind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn). (The third is the only one that requires a full orchestra with concertante parts.) These were given some very informative background by the composer, printed on the back side of the original album. Sadly, those notes were omitted from the accompanying booklet; but they can be read with a magnifying glass on the sleeve that reproduces both sides of the Odyssey release.
From a production point of view, this is certainly not the most satisfying account of Chávez’ music. On the other hand the complete catalog of performances by Chávez himself is limited, to say the least. This is one of those situations in which those wishing to know more about the composer’s works are obliged to take what they can get. Thus, the quantity of the new Sony release is a welcome one, even if many of the recordings do not rise to usual expectations.
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