FEDERICO IBARRA (b.1946): Symphonies No. 1, No. 2 “Las antesalas del sueño”, No. 3 and No. 4 “Commemorativo”, Obertura para un nuevo milenio, Los ojos del sueño, Duelo del siglos, Chorus of the Benemerita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Ballet Imágenes del quinto sol.

Description: Ibarra is regarded as one of Mexico's leading composers, and justly so; his music is powerful and emotionally charged, in a potent neo-romantic idiom of considerable originality (though he seems to delight in teasing his audience with direct hommages to familiar works of the Romantic era). Known for his operas, these orchestral works display at least as impressive an aspect of his prolific output. He composed his symphonies between 1991 and 2010, each on a larger and more ambitious scale than its predecessor. The taut, succinct Symphony No.1 marks an impressively auspicious beginning to the cycle. Based on sonata form, it explodes into propulsive action from the very opening, and is imbued with the spirit of the dance (especially that of the great early ballets of Stravinsky) and a vital, restless energy. A graceful, dreamlike slow section is incorporated into the structure, after which the initial momentum returns to end the piece. The 2nd Symphony "The waiting rooms of sleep" is also in a single span, though larger in scale and orchestral forces. It’s unsettling trajectory suggests the nightmarish delirium of insomnia, full of threatening phantasmagoria and looming, sunless landscapes. It begins with ominous chromatic slitherings in the lowest reaches of the orchestra, leaden pounding and tolling bells, rising to a powerful climax. More sliding figuration over a minatory ostinato leads to the "slow movement", which inhabits the menacing gloom of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. The "finale" bursts in, rhythmic and heavily percussive, with a driving propulsiveness modelled (rather closely!) on Koschei's Infernal Dance from "Firebird". No. 3 is a textbook example of exactly what a neo-romantic symphony, cast in the tonal language of the first half of the 20th century, can do at its best and most expressive. A fierce fanfare announces the first subject of the first movement, an ostinato-driven military march with a quieter but anxious second part with a "Russian" feel to its contour. This returns in increasingly aggressive guise as the movement develops by contrasting it with the second subject, a graceful waltz, and abruptly ends the movement. The central Lento is precisely the mysterious nocturne that you hoped would follow such an outburst of belligerence. A brief climax looms up out of the gloom, then all is tranquility and mystery again. Ominous subterranean stirrings introduce the finale, urgent and energetic, obstinately rhythmic and suggestive of a fight scene from a ballet by Stravinsky or Prokofiev. A tense, anticipatory central episode coils like an overwound spring before its energy is released in a resumption of the opening hostilities. Symphony No.4 was commissioned for the centenary of the National University of Mexico, but this monumental four-movement work is about as far from a mere occasional piece as one can imagine. It begins with a slow introduction, shrouded in Stygian gloom, which leads to a passage that must surely be consciously derived from Mussorgsky's "Dawn over the Moskva river", the entire orchestra transformed into a vast tolling bell. The movement is in sonata form, the first subject a percussion-driven allegro, the second mysterious and ominous. There follows a sardonic, ostinato-propelled scherzo. The side drum from Nielsen's 5th makes a cameo appearance in a slithery trio section, leading to a crushing climax; the malevolent imps of the scherzo return to close the movement. The slow movement opens as a massive funeral cortège, limned in cimmerian hues and with masterly employment of massed orchestral sonorities. Little by little the textures lighten, and eventually the wordless choir enters like the sun breaking through dark clouds. The finale begins with an orchestral introduction of granitic grandeur, suggestive of a mythical castle more than an university, and when the choir enters it is with a fervour and sense of epic solemnity that evokes the Requiem Mass more than the paean to learning by Justo Sierra Méndez (unfortunately not given or identified in the booklet). The music later takes on the character of a triumphal march and ends with a blazing hymn. The wide range of other music here is just as impressive. The millennial Overture comprises bold, assertive, extrovert outer sections, somewhat reminiscent of Shostakovich, with an uneasy, highly chromatic central part which suggests that the composer’s expectations of the forthcoming millennium (as of the year the piece was written) were not especially optimistic. As a composer noted for his works for the stage (as reflected in the dramatic contours of his symphonies), it comes as no surprise that his numerous song cycles also have a sure sense of dramaturgy and a deeply expressive quality of characterisation. The Eyes of Sleep (2007) explores the oneiric landscapes of poems by José Gorostiza, whose persistent imagery of the continuum of waking, sleep, night, dream and death are ideally suited to Ibarra's muse. Duel of Centuries is a brief symphonic poem in the form of a passacaglia which undergoes the cumulative accretion of power and massiveness typical of the genre, through a series of variations in superbly inventive orchestration. The ballet score is a masterpiece of atmosphere, orchestral colour, and rhythm. An evocation of Toltec myths and their resonance in Mexican culture, the music stands somewhat apart from the other works here in its striving for a particular kind of musical primitivism, magnificently achieved through an extraordinary alchemy of timbral sonorism and massed orchestral effects. The snarling of horns and the blaring of primitive trumpets, along with the composer’s characteristically exuberant use of percussion, combine to evoke cinematically vivid images of an ancient world of cruel gods, blood sacrifices, and orgiastic rituals. 2 CDs. Orquesta Filarmónica 5 de Mayo; Fernando Lozano.