Entrevista ao Pianista Miguel Campinho - Martin Anderson - Fanfare Magazine

Miguel Campinho presents Eurico Tomás de Lima and the Portuguese Piano Tradition

BY MARTIN ANDERSON

One of the advantages of being on the Fanfare interview team is that you’re asked to talk to musicians about composers you’ve never heard of before and, until a Numérica double album (NUM 1249) of the piano music of the Portuguese composer Eurico Tomás de Lima (1908–1989) arrived by way of preparation, Tomás de Lima was indeed one such. A Skype conversation with the pianist on these two discs, Miguel Campinho, who also wrote the booklet essay, helped dispel my ignorance.

Q: The obvious initial question is: Who was Eurico Tomás de Lima?

A: He was the son of a violinist and a conductor named António Tomás de Lima. His father was a professor at the Lisbon Conservatory, so he had a musical upbringing. His main piano teacher was one Alexandre Rey Colaço (1854–1928), who was born in Tangier, had originally Spanish citizenship, and studied in Berlin, at the Hochschule, under Karl Heinrich Barth (a Tausig student, who later in life became the teacher of Arthur Rubinstein). Rey Colaço then taught at Berlin for a while and came to Lisbon, to be a sort of court pianist as well as to be a teacher at the Conservatory—he was also the piano teacher of the princes. Following his death, Tomás de Lima completed his studies with José Vianna da Motta (1868–1948), a major figure, a student of Liszt and Hans von Bülow. After that he started concertizing and in about 1932, at the time of the First Sonata, he performed his first recital, playing only his own works. He was very well received and made his career as a pianist in the Portuguese-speaking world, which traditionally, in terms of musicians, has meant a lot of back-and-forth between Portugal and Brazil. He went to Brazil two times and played in various cities there. Since it was a very isolationist time for Portugal, he circumscribed himself to the country. Being such a small country, we tend to limit our cultural flags, so to speak—we don’t have that much space for that many geniuses, so we tend to hold up one genius per generation and the other ones we tend to keep under wraps.

Q: You say he stuck to the Lusophone world; did he not perform in other European capitals or elsewhere in the Americas?

A: No. He had friends who played his music in France and Spain, people who played other instruments—violinists, flutists—but he was a home-grown success. And even “success” is in quotes, because whenever he performed, the situation outside of Lisbon wasn’t in any way conducive to earning a living just by playing. So he taught, privately—he was rarely part of an institution until the very last years of his life when, in the 1970s, he got a position in the Conservatory of my home town, Braga. He retired here, and—this is probably my only connection with him, since he retired the year I was born and I never met him—he gave his last recital in the hall where I played in public for the first time.

Q: Didn’t he even cross over the border now and then to concertize in Spain?

A: No, the reason being that Portugal, throughout most of his adult life, from 1926 to 1974, was under this very tight and very isolationist dictatorship.

Q: But Salazar’s Portugal and Franco’s Spain were similarly oriented—one might have expected some kind of cultural exchange.

A: There wasn’t much cultural back-and-forth between Spain and Portugal. In fact, the official cultural policy of the regime was to build up cultural identity by national manifestations, for the nationals. At one point, Tomás de Lima was part of this government-sponsored band of musicians that toured the country playing anywhere and everywhere—actually with a piano in the back of a bus!

Q: What kind of concerts did he give—Beethoven for the masses, or simpler fare?

A: He played a little bit of the standard repertoire. I recall seeing programs where he played the “Appassionata,” Chopin’s Third Ballade , Liszt’s La Campanella , those sorts of things. But when he played solo, he tended to play his own works more and more. After a certain time he would only play his own works and contemporary composers. He was very fond of another forgotten pianist-composer of the time of Vianna da Motta, called Óscar da Silva (1870–1958), who studied in Leipzig and then had some lessons with Clara Schumann in Frankfurt before coming back to Portugal. He is another one from a previous generation who was all but forgotten. Tomás de Lima was known in musical circles. He played several times a concertante work that he wrote, a Fantasia for piano and orchestra; there’s a recording in the national radio archives of him playing it with the orchestra of the Porto Conservatory. There are, I believe, some 14 recordings of his recitals for the national radio.

Q: Your booklet essay talks about Tomás de Lima playing Chopin, Liszt, and Beethoven, but what one hears in the music is a Russian influence—Medtner in the First Sonata, Prokofiev in the Third….

A: Yes. In fact, I purposely abstained from making that kind of comparison exactly to see what kind of feedback I would get from people, because I didn’t want to influence them in any way. I think that the material on the two CDs is so diverse and has so many faces that you can really hear different influences. There’s a newspaper interview in 1947, where he says that one of the big references for him is “the current Slavic school.”

Q: That suggests that, although his concert-giving may have been confined to Portugal and his performing repertoire to the classics and his own music, he did keep up to date, at least to some extent, with what was happening in the world of music further afield. He must have been listening to recordings or reading scores and that kind of thing.

A: For sure. I would say that he was totally up-to-date with his world but that he was, by choice, fully immersed in the tonal tradition, the late romantic tradition. He was the exact contemporary of the man we consider to be our greatest 20th-century composer, Fernando Lopes Graça (1906–1994), who was a professed Modernist. Lopes Graça loved Stravinsky, Bartók, and Schoenberg, and wrote a lot of music for piano that was purposefully anti-romantic in style. Tomás de Lima seems to have dug his heels in and said to himself: “This”–romantic music—“is the kind of music that I like, and I’m going to write it like this, not because I couldn’t write in other ways, or because I don’t know that other ways are happening.”

Q: The textures, too, are very much those of a late-romantic composer, with a warmth and fullness that more explicitly modernist composers eschewed.

A: That was the strong impression that drew me to the manuscripts in the first place.

Q: So the recordings were made from Tomás de Lima’s manuscripts? Is none of this music published?

A: None of it is published. Indeed, I came to them almost by accident. In 2005 I was spending a year in Portugal, working here in Braga, and the lady who was in charge of the music department of the university here, the Universidade do Minho, said: “You should come by. We have these piano scores of this unknown composer. Would you like to take a look at it? Maybe you might like to play something.” I went in without any great hopes of finding anything interesting, and I found myself reading through one piece after another. I was counting on spending half-an-hour, and I spent the whole morning there!

Q: Had you at least heard the name of Eurico Tomás de Lima before?

A: No, I had no inkling. When I was growing up, he was already retired, and on his way to being forgotten. Until the last decade of the last century we seem to have had this idea of music always moving forward, like societies, and whatever is not new and moving forward is pulling us backward, and that would be a bad thing. It is only when we look at the more conservative things on an equal footing to the more forward-facing things that we can appreciate them for what they are, and not for what they are not.

Q: These two CDs contain the complete sonatas and sonatinas—is there much more?

A: A friend of mine released a CD two years ago [João Lima, playing on Numérica NUM 1210]. There he recorded two Portuguese Suites , and four of what Tomás de Lima called Black Dances [Danças Negras ], which basically are meant to portray African folk.

Q: Had his travels in Lusophone countries taken him to Angola or Mozambique, then?

A: I don’t think so. Through most of his adult life, in the 1950s and 60s, the situation in the African colonies was close to a boiling point, and the explosion came in the 60s, so it wasn’t as appealing as it had been at the beginning of the century.

There’s a piece he wrote in 1945, Buchenwald—Protesto Musical , as a reaction to the news of the death-camps. It was probably the most political thing that he ever wrote (the sub-title is “Pain, Machine-Guns, Death”). He performed it a couple of times and created a political stir; there were fears that he would be forbidden to play, because that piece had a political connotation, and the death-camps showed fascism in the worst possible light. As the regime here was also fascist, he had the secret police attending his recitals and preparing for some kind of political demonstrations.

Q: Each of these CDs ends with a suite, where he seems much more relaxed than in the Sonatas and Sonatinas.

A: That is my sentiment also. I only tell this to people who ask, but the Algarve Suite is my favorite piece of all the music on these two CDs. There, for once, he is not thinking of how to successfully convey a structure—a three-movement structure, a sonata structure, or a rondo-type thing; he’s just painting musical portraits. It really feels more improvised, more evocative, and more imaginative.

Q: It’s as if he is no longer looking over his shoulder to check that posterity approves of what he is doing.

A: Exactly. It’s funny that both of the suites come out of years of travel. Algarve is the direct result of those two years in the early 1940s when he toured the country, playing some 70 concerts in one year, traveling by bus, so he got to see a lot of colorful places. And the last suite, Ilha do Paraíso (Paradise Island), was written in the year he spent teaching in Madeira as the head of the conservatory there, on a one-year contract. It’s a take on Luís de Camões (c. 1524–1580) and his epic poem Os Lusiadas (The Lusiads). As part of the narrative, the gods give Vasco da Gama and his sailors the prize of stopping on an island called The Island of Love on their way back to Portugal. Tomás de Lima makes that poetic connection, saying that Madeira would be that type of earthly paradise.

Q: That makes two of the movements in the Suite—“Penha d’Águia” and “Cabo Girão”—all the more surprising, since they seem to be mere texture, recurrent phrases that simply modulate step-wise, to no apparent purpose.

A: Those two are depictions, the first one of a mountain with a flat top in Madeira, and the other one of a very impressive cape. Each of them works better as a live piece than as a recording object, because when you are listening to a recording, you tend hear the nuts and bolts, and these are the kind of paintings you have to see from afar.

Q: Is there a “Tomás de Lima” school of playing in Portugal or some other influence left in his wake?

A: His teaching was sporadic. He gave mainly private lessons, and taught in this school and that school. From what I read in testimonies and from conversations with his son, my picture is that as a person he was probably a man with very strict ideas and a very short temper. Probably he wasn’t very kind, professionally, to people around him (that’s just my hunch). Hearing recordings of him playing, my sentiment is of someone very proper, a gentleman type, but very studious, fastidious, and correct in his playing. I remember thinking to myself when I first listened to those recordings that probably, if I played these pieces for him, he would tell me: “No, it’s all wrong! You have to unlearn everything you did and do it the way I tell you to do it.”

Q: So were his own recordings not much help in preparing these new ones?

A: They were very helpful in providing boundaries, because what I heard was very much what I like to call old-school pianism, stemming from Vianna da Motta. A quote from Charles Rosen comes to mind: “They played like gentlemen!” So he created boundaries—nothing too fast, nothing too rubato, pedaling very clean at all times. That put me in place.

Q: A bit of impropriety can bring a performance alive, though.

A: Of course! Most of his recordings were made at the radio studios, but the recording of his Fantasia for piano and orchestra, for example, is a live broadcast, and he lets go, he’s a bit feisty, especially in the bravura passages—so he could come alive himself.

Q: What explains the title of the set, Saber Ouvir (Know How to Listen)?

A: That’s the generic title of the series, an umbrella title for several projects developed by the artistic producer of the CDs, Miguel Leite, who’s a very good friend of mine. He was already the producer of the other CD dedicated to Tomás de Lima. He organizes concerts and conferences, here in Braga and in the north of Portugal under this umbrella name, and also has a syndicated radio program under the same name. So it’s part of his realm of projects, so to speak.

To wrap up the presentation of Tomás de Lima, this is music that was written from the piano and for the piano, first and foremost. It derives from the grand romantic tradition, and here and there it reveals real gems.

The Portuguese piano tradition is a very big and continuous one, and most of the names are not as well known and as “placed” in general music history as they should be, because we tend to see and write about music in big waves, as either operatic composers or symphonists, and if you’re not one or the other, you’re going to get little more than a footnote. For a peripheral country like Portugal in general European music history, we already only get a footnote, so our piano music gets much less emphasis. Even starting with Portuguese performers and Portuguese researchers, only in these past 20 years has the tide started to turn. But Óscar da Silva, for example, who has tons of material published that no one knows about (even Portuguese researchers), was a major piano composer. He wrote in a late romantic vein and never became a full-out Modernist. He attempted in some pieces to be more aggressive and less romantic, but at the end of his life he kind of reverted to the good old ways. And there are others. We revere a contemporary of Beethoven, João Domingos Bomtempo (1775–1842), the first director of the Lisbon Conservatory, and the first European-level pianist here. He was very successful in Paris; he lived for a while in London and Clementi published his works. He has, for instance, four piano concertos to his credit that no one ever gets to hear. I could add the name of Arthur Napoleão (1843–1925) who also toured Europe and eventually settled in Brazil. He decided to have what he called a serious life and gave up playing to set up a music publishing house. He wrote for piano in a relaxed, not-too-demanding way, but it certainly deserves to be known and referenced.

Q: Time we found out a little more about you. Your accent and command of English suggests that you have lived in the U.S.A. for a long period.

A: I’ve been living and working in or around Hartford, Connecticut, for the past 13 years. I went there to study and ended up enjoying the place, successively getting one degree after another: I’m currently in the final stages of my Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance, also at the University of Hartford, studying with the Brazilian pianist Luiz de Moura Castro. I try to spend my vacation time in Portugal, and during these years, paradoxically, being away drove me to be more interested in all things Portuguese. In the seven or eight years since I began reading these manuscripts here, I’ve become very interested in and very focused on Portuguese piano music.

Q: How much have American audiences been exposed to Tomás de Lima by now?

A: I’ve performed most of the music on the CDs in America, mostly in Connecticut, with two small excursions, to Southern California and the LA area, where I did a couple of concerts with a soprano friend of mine and I included on the programs some pieces by Tomás de Lima. But I can say for sure that I’ve been the only one to perform them in North America, ever!

TOMÁS DE LIMA Sonatas: No. 1 in c♯; No. 2 in e; No. 3 in a; No. 4 in F. Sonatinas: No. 1 in A; No. 2 in C. Algarve: Suite for Piano. Ilha do Paraíso: Suite in Six Pictures • Miguel Campinho (pn) • NUMÉRICA 1249 (2 CDs: 140:25)

program note read in Portuguese and English by Maria Amélia Carvalho

Miguel Campinho states in his interview that “this is music that was written from the piano and for the piano, first and foremost, and music that derives from the grand romantic tradition”—which is a pretty fair summary. It’s big-hearted stuff, the heart in question worn not quite on the sleeve but certainly in full visibility. Its weakness is that it too often relies on patterns and phrases that are repeated without enough change to maintain interest. Thus the opening First Sonata of 1933, circa 20 minutes in length, has a first movement of Medtnerian sweep and fullness, but a slow movement which loses interest through that over-reliance on formulae, and a toccata-like Allegro con fuoco Finale which engages the ear with its robotic energy—the first time around, that is, since it keeps returning and ends up overstaying its welcome. The Second Sonata, written two years later and also around the 20-minute mark, is only slightly less in-your-face. The central section of the first movement has a popular-song simplicity, but it leads into more of Tomás de Lima’s repeated figurations, from which the return of the song offers welcome relief. The Scherzo brings echoes of the middle-period sonatas of Eckhardt-Gramatté, dating from around a decade earlier; a desultory slow movement then leads in a brittle Finale. The First Sonatina (1938), at just over seven minutes, is easier going, with some of the textures in the first movement owing much to Chopin and, again, a hint of popular song in some of the melodic material; the central Andante has a distantly jazzy flavor; and the third, an angular moto perpetuo , elbows its way aggressively forward. The eight miniatures of the suite Algarve (1941), with less to prove, are more relaxed in manner than the two sonatas and the Sonatina which precede it on this CD, finding room for some delicate humor (though most of it is fairly broad-shouldered) and more explicit folk-dance references, though the writing still exploits the full range of the keyboard.

The second disc opens with the explicitly Prokofievan Third Sonata (1948), which piles into immediate action with a biting chordal first subject, offset with a chant-like second subject, before the first subject returns with primitivist zeal, and it’s over in less than three minutes. An edgy Andante finds a way through unsettled harmonies but finds no resolution, and the finale is a vigorous folk-dance, punched out without sentimentality. The Second Sonatina (1950) opens in like manner, Allegro deciso , with a folk dance harmonized into brittle chords and a languid second subject; the central Andante has a childlike simplicity, with an innocent little song bookending a more forceful decorated chorale; and another folk tune forms the finale, the harmony undermined almost to the point of bitonality as Tomás de Lima batters it with foreign elements. The Fourth Sonata (1954) has audible points of contact with the piano music of Ginastera and other South American folklorist composers; indeed, if you had told me that this was music by an Argentinian, I’d have probably gone along with you. The Allegro giocoso opening movement offers the now familiar blend of romantic textures, chorale and folk dance held together in a sonata form where the composer makes little developmental effort to hide the joins—he just moves between ideas as he feels. The middle movement is another of Tomás de Lima’s uncertain Andante s, edging its way forward in search of a tonality—and he trusts rather too much in this harmonic tension to bring interest to the music, when it’s not enough to overcome the baldness of the thematic material. The good-natured folk-rondo Finale, at least, benefits from the contrast, bursting through with the energy of a group leader waking up dozing campers. The final music item on the second CD, as with the first, is an illustrative “Suite in Six Pictures,” Ilha do Paraíso , inspired, as Campinho told me, by Tomás de Lima’s year as head of the Conservatory in Funchal, on the island of Madeira, in 1966. Unlike the movements of Algarve , though, which mostly hover around the two-minute mark, some of those in Ilha do Paraíso are of some length, the first over seven minutes, second nearly four, and sixth three-and-a-half. They don’t all justify this kind of expanse, and the repeated figurations of the two (of which I complained to Miguel Campinho) have no more interest than your standard technical exercise. The best music here, though, has a delicate, evocative quality that might usefully have brought some variety to the more formal pieces they accompany in this set.

The piano tone is hard and brittle, a shortcoming underlined by Campinho’s forceful keyboard manner: His enthusiasm for the music is such that he sometimes hectors it; letting it breathe a little more might have softened the impression of unfocussed garrulity—but not by much! An odd feature with this release is the inclusion of the booklet text at the end of each CD, read out in Portuguese on the first CD and in English on the second, by Maria Amélia Carvalho of the University of Minho (perhaps she is the person he mentioned as telling him about this music in the first place). I daresay visually handicapped listeners will appreciate the gesture, as also those wishing to improve their Portuguese; even so, I can’t see the point of it.

Tomás de Lima, then, is not a discovery of the first importance, a verdict with which Miguel Campinho himself might agree: The music has limitations which would take a Horowitz to overcome. But much of the music has a rough-hewn vigor which, in limited doses, is refreshingly honest, and honesty, indeed, is the hallmark of the music as a whole: Tomás de Lima wrote it as it came to him. The effect is rather that of the person who, unconscious of etiquette, says things that embarrass more worldly-wise people—who know, nonetheless, that he’s telling the truth. Martin Anderson

MusicWeb - Crítica de John France

Eurico Tomás de LIMA (1908-1989) Collected Works - Volume 2 Sonata No. 1, in C-sharp Minor (1933) [18:51] Sonata No. 2, in E Minor (1935) [22:07] Sonatina No. 1, in A Major (1938) [7:23] Algarve (Suite for Piano) (1941) [14:30] Sonata No. 3, in A minor (1948 rev.1963) [7:55] Sonatina No. 2, in C Major (1950) [9:34] Sonata No. 4, in F Major (1954) [17:45] Ilha do Paraíso (Suite in six tableaux) (1966) [21:20] Miguel Campinho (piano) rec. Auditório de Academia de Música de Paços de Brandão, 6, 10 August 2012. NUMERICA NUM1249 [73:18 + 67:07] I pride myself on knowing something about the highways and the byways of piano music - both at home and abroad. However pride often comes before a fall! Nevertheless, I cannot imagine how I have got to the age I am, after many years of classical music listening, having missed the works of Eurico Tomás de Lima. One thing that life has taught me is that there is a wealth of music out there that demands to be explored: it is quite simply finding time and opportunity to do it. Firstly, I give a few biographical notes about the composer. Eurico Tomás de Lima was born in Ponta Delgada on the island of São Miguel in the Azores on 17 December 1908. He moved to Lisbon at an early age. He was born into a musical family - his father António was a violinist, conductor, composer and professor of music at the National Conservatory in Lisbon. Portuguese music is a specialised field with which I guess few in the United Kingdom will be totally conversant. It is therefore hardly surprising that de Lima’s piano and composition teachers at the National Conservatory are not even names to me. However, his music history teacher was a certain Luis de Freitas Branco (1890-1955), a well-respected composer who has made an impact outside of his native country. His symphonies are highly regarded: they have been recorded on the Naxos label. After an exemplary period of study in which he gained the highest academic award at the Conservatory, he assumed a career as a recitalist and composer. In 1932 Eurico Tomás de Lima gave his first major piano recital playing his own compositions. His career included concert tours including two major events in Brazil in 1949 and 1952. There were (apparently) numerous recordings for record companies, TV and radio stations in Europe and Latin America. He was a distinguished teacher and had posts in Oporto, Funchal and at the Academia de Amadores in Lisbon. The last part of his career was at the Calouste Gulbenkian Conservatory of Music in Braga from 1972-1978. Due to his ‘liberal’ political views, he was never preferred for any permanent music post in Portugal during the Salazar regime. No recognition was given to his achievement. As a composer, de Lima has written extensively for the pianoforte - especially solo works, but also including concerted pieces. There is also vocal and chamber music in his catalogue. Eurico Tomás de Lima died in June 1989 in the city of Maia. There are typically three groups of works represented here. Firstly, there are all four Piano Sonatas which were composed over a twenty-one year period. Secondly, there are two Sonatinas and lastly a couple of suites - ‘Algarve’ and ‘Ilha de Paraiso’ (Isle of Paradise). I suggest beginning with the two Suites. The first was composed in 1941, after a year with the ‘Cultural Missions of the National Secretariat for Propaganda’. At that time Portugal was a neutral country during the Second World War. During this period de Lima gave concerts across Portugal. The Suite is fundamentally poetic and late-romantic rather than in the more ‘modernist’ style of the Sonatinas. There are eight ‘picture postcards’ none lasting more than three minutes. Each is prefaced by a short commentary in the score which the composer insisted was read out before the performance of each piece. For example No.4 ‘Pota da Piedade’ has ‘With its kisses, the sea embroidered everything, There are here and there small and gentle grottos with crystals/With a childish appearance of children’s gift.’ I guess these words loose a little in the translation - but we get the idea. Some of these ‘pictures’ are very beautiful and drift towards a subdued impressionism. A contemporary reviewer suggested that the suite had a ‘well-worked out structure, large and vibrant inspiration, unique intuition for the descriptive genre, which requires, as we know, unusual sounds in its composition.’ The various movements ‘describe’ a majestic castle, impressive scenery, historical character, a ‘cubist’ village, gardens and waves. But do not take these allusions too seriously - just enjoy the music. The second suite ‘Ilha do Paraíso’ (Island of Paradise) was composed relatively late in 1966. It was written in the beautiful town of Funchal during the year when he was Artistic Director of the Academy of Music and Fine Arts on the island of Madeira. The composer, writing for a newspaper after the first performance, suggested that they ‘could not be insensitive to the beauty of this magical island- I had to express myself in music - beautiful, evanescent and seductive music, which awakens in the hearts of men a world of dream … it is pure music, erudite, serious in romantic idiom, but with lucid expression.’ This suite is in six movements and is infused with both the landscape and the traditions of Madeira. I guess the next place to explore is the two Sonatinas. These are more ‘modern’ in their style than the two suites leaning towards neo-classicism: the musical language is terse and concentrated. They are both full of interest and are not dry or ‘academic’. Francis Poulenc is possibly the referential marker to compare this music to. The first Sonatina in A major was composed in 1938 and is conceived in three movements. I found the ‘andante’ surprisingly reflective for a ‘little sonata’. The last movement is an acerbic ‘moto perpetuo’. The second Sonatina in C major was composed in 1950. The liner notes are correct in stating that de Lima has effectively squared the circle - he has ‘integrated the seemingly irreconcilable elements of classically-inspired form, romantic poetic lyricism, cosmopolitan modernism and dialogue with national folklore’ (folksong). Certainly, the second Sonatina has a confidence that transcends the limited scale of the work. The four Sonatas, define the composer’s achievement. The first was completed in 1933 and the last some twenty years later in 1954. The 1st Sonata in C sharp minor was written in Lisbon. It is clear that the composer was using the classical sonata form as the basis of his essay. De Lima even repeats the exposition in the first movement - which is a truly classical device. The ‘andante’ is a ‘long lyrical song’ of some considerable beauty. The last movement is a ‘pot-boiler’ - here there are nods to American ragtime and jazz. It is a superb conclusion. It is the romantic piano style of Chopin that dominates this music rather than Beethoven. Two years later, de Lima penned the Sonata No.2 in E minor. It is by far the longest piano work that he wrote. He dedicated it to his wife. De Lima has moved away from a rigorous classicism and utilises as more ‘sectional’ structure on the opening ‘allegro appassionato’. The second ‘subject’ is pure operatic fantasy. The Scherzo is regarded as ‘an amusement’ albeit a complicated and virtuosic one. The slow movement seems to have Beethoven as its model: this ‘andante cantabile’ is a quiet, restrained exploration of a variety of textures and pianistic devices. It is often brittle, but ultimately, warmly lyrical. The final rondo, an allegro impetuoso brings this striking sonata to a powerful and largely romantic close. The 3rd Sonata in A minor (1948 rev. 1963) is more like a sonatina in its short, concentrated format. Certainly, the composer has adapted a more ‘modernist’ style than his previous two exercises in the genre. This is not serial music, nor in any way ‘avant garde’. The general impression of the opening ‘allegro risoluto’ is of ‘aggressive music. Gregorian chant appears as one of the elements of this music which reminded me of Debussy. The second movement is quite dry in its effect -with a balance between chromatic and metrical explorations. The final movement is in complete contrast. This is pure virtuosic music written in a ‘bitingly modern style’ yet never too far from the more romantic exemplars such Liszt. Eurico Tomás de Lima’s 4th Sonata in F Major can be regarded as the ‘culmination of a musical voyage of discovery.’ The liner notes suggest that this Sonata has the same integration of disparate elements that are found in the 2nd sonatina -but applied on a much more impressive scale. Beethovian formal procedures, ‘romantic poetics’ and an edgy modernism, the use of folk song materials and a Lisztian virtuosity are keynotes in this work. The work was composed in 1954 and was the first work that the composer recorded for the National Radio in 1956. Included on these CDs are ‘Program Notes’ which are given in Portuguese (Disc 1) and English (Disc 2) It is essential listening to anyone interested in de Lima’s music. The sound quality of these two CDs is excellent. The liner notes are comprehensive, if a little crabbed in their translation from Portuguese. A brief biography of the pianist Miguel Campinho is available on his webpage. I enjoyed virtually every bar of this 2-CD set of Eurico Tomás de Lima’s piano music. Miguel Campinho is a most persuasive advocate for these works. As I mentioned earlier, it is hard to imagine how I can have overlooked this composer. I guess that is because he has not been extensively recorded before - at least out with Portugal. Furthermore it is hardly likely that de Lima will feature in many piano recitals in the United Kingdom. If I was to describe this music in a short sentence it would be ‘Poulenc meets Chopin with introductions from Beethoven’ however, that would be doing all four composers a grave injustice. Yet it gives the innocent ear an idea of what to expect. John France

Musical Pointers & Fanfare Magazine

Seguem abaixo as transcrições integrais das críticas até ao momento publicadas em Língua Inglesa ao 2º Volume da Antologia Discográfica "SABER OUVIR" (Cd Duplo), o qual contém a Integral das Sonatas e Sonatinas do Pianista/Compositor Português Eurico Tomás de Lima (1908-1989) na interpretação do Pianista Miguel Campinho. Este Cd encontra-se disponível para aquisição no Site da Numérica Multimédia, no Amazon e no ITUNES. "Musical Pointers" é um Site Britânico Especializado em Crítica Musical de Cds e o artigo é assinado pelo Pianista Escocês Christopher Guild. "Fanfare Magazine" é uma Revista Norte-Americana Especializada e o artigo de Crítica Musical é assinado pelo Conceituado Crítico Peter J. Rabinowitz.

Crítica(s) 2

TOMÁS DE LIMA Piano Sonatas: Nos. 1-4. Piano Sonatinas: Nos. 1-2. Algarve. Ilha do Paraiso • Miguel Campinho (pn) • NUMÉRICA NUM 1249 (140:25)  Spoken program notes in English and Portuguese It’s just as unfair to call Eurico Tomás de Lima (1908-1989) the Portuguese Medtner as it is to call Medtner the Russian Brahms—but it’s fairer than calling him the Portuguese Messiaen or the Portuguese Carter. Despite a few nods to Iberian folk music (say, in the last movement of the Second Sonatina or the fifth movement of Ilha do Paraiso) and some near-Eastern coloration in the first movement of Algarve, he hews fairly closely (as Miguel Campinho’s lengthy and illuminating notes remind us) to the Austrian-German romantic tradition. And despite some dipping into whole-notes scales and some wrong-note harmonies of the sort Prokofiev was exploring in his early years (the demeanor of the opening movement of the Third Sonata has more than a fleeting resemblance to the idiom of Suggestion diabolique), his music remains loyal to tonality. Old fashioned? Certainly, there’s nothing in any of these compositions that betrays its date of composition. Rather than pursue the new paths represented by the avant-gardes of his time, Tomás de Lima seems (on the evidence here) to have preferred to develop the virtuoso romantic tradition of the generation before him. Thus, for the most part, these are technically challenging works notable for their heroic striving (try the dramatic finale of the Second Sonata), their elaborate textures, and (most striking, I think) their often bittersweet harmonies. But unless you have a dogmatic commitment to art that chases the moving target of the cutting edge, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here—certainly, enough to make you wonder why this music has remained so little known (Tomás de Lima doesn’t even get a bio in the latest Grove). Granted, there are moments where he strait-jackets his rhythms and phrases; there are moments of gestural doggedness (“Penha d’Águia,” from Ilha do Paraiso, seems almost like a Hanon Etude); and there are spots, in the more illustrative music, where the music doesn’t quite match the supposed subject (we’re told that the third movement of Algarve represents “the famous conqueror of the kingdom of the Algarve” as he “arrives tempestuously in a cavalry charge against the infidels,” but the music sounds a lot jollier and more whimsical than that). Still, the overall quality is strikingly high. Favorite moments? The emotional surge that launches the first movement of the First Sonata; the dizzy clatter of the toccata that rounds off the First Sonatina; the whimsical quirkiness of Jardins de Estói (from Algarve), a clear descendent of Liadov’s Musical Snuff Box; the tender lyricism that interrupts the first movement of the Second Sonata. If you’ve taken to such other outdated romantics as Bortkiewicz and Boyle (see 36:1), you owe it to yourself to give Tomás de Lima a try. We’re told that Tomás de Lima was a virtuoso pianist himself—and that he was a persuasive advocate for his own music. Apparently, he made some radio recordings back in the day—but I’ve never heard them, and about half of these new performances are advertised as world premiere recordings. In any case, he has a committed advocate in Miguel Campinho. There may be a touch of strain in some of the denser passages, and a want of color in spots where Tomás de Lima plays on delicacy; but for the most part, the performances grip your attention. Perfectly adequate sound, too. All in all, a welcome introduction to an essentially forgotten composer. Peter J. Rabinowitz

Crítica(s)

Obras para Piano de Eurico Tomás de Lima (1908-1989) Miguel Campinho, piano Numerica Multimedia NUM 1249 Eurico Tomás de Lima [L] This release on ‘Numerica’ chronicles the piano works of one of Portugal’s most important composer-pianists of the last 150 years, Eurico Tomas de Lima (1908-89). The two-disc set, the second volume in the series, presents all Tomas de Lima’s Piano Sonatas, along with two Sonatinas and two suites, and are inspired by and portraying elements of his native land. It makes for enjoyable listening, with several works notable for their poignant lyricism, glorious colouristic effects and a distinctly nationalistic flavour. The works on offer here span 33 years (1933-66), and it is certainly interesting to trace the evolution and exploration of the various styles which Tomas de Lima assimilates over this period. His earlier works are of a late romantic style - for instance, Sonata No.1 (1933 - listen especially for the second movement, with its heart-wrenchingly beautiful theme and searching harmonic progressions), but only a few years later in Sonatina No.1 in A minor the composer has begun to explore a quasi-neclassical language not too far away from that of Poulenc. Sonata No.3 of the late 1940’s certainly has great bite to it, being immediately more hard-edged than any of the other works here, and less overtly emotional. Musical language aside, what does evolve and indeed improve with time is Tomas de Lima’s control of structure. Sonata No.1 suffers heavily from much repetition which weakens the first movement. Much of the extended passagework through certain pieces is a little empty. One might argue that such instances can be ‘made good’ through performance, and, being a concert pianist himself, the composer may well have utilised repetitive writing as a means to explore pianistic sonority extempore. Help is needed from the performer if this music is to be truly sold to new listeners. Compositional weakness is not such an issue with the later works, and the Sonatina are much more convincing in their economy of means and immediacy of expression. The two Suites here are fine sets of Tableaux which successfully portray an essence of Portugal. In the case of Algarve, ‘commentaries’ were written for Tomas de Lima by Fernando de Araujo Lima. Miguel Campinho is an audibly enthusiastic advocate of his compatriot’s music, but much of his playing lacks the necessary sensitivity to fully realise many of the special qualities inherent in the music. He tends to be rather heavy-handed, at times too direct in his touch when cantabile must surely be needed, and often there are instances when he could let the music dance just a little more, and flow with greater ease. Particularly distracting are some audible pedal changes, especially those done in rapid succession. Campinho’s liner notes - informative, if a little dry - are in his native Portugese, with a clumsy English translation. A nice touch is that Numerica have recorded the notes, as printed in the sleeve, and those are found by the last track on each disc. Eurico Tomas de Lima is undoubtedly a composer whose works should be heard, and many of them would be effective in any piano recital. Their vernacular charm and exuberance are blended with influences of Poulenc, Debussy, Rachmaninov and Liszt. Christopher Guild

Concerto Comemorativo dos 60 Anos de Carreira Artística do Maestro António Victorino d'Almeida

A Universidade do Minho promove 2 Concertos Sinfónicos Comemorativos dos 60 Anos de Carreira Artística do Maestro António Victorino d'Almeida.

Nesses Concertos, em que o Maestro dirigirá a Orquestra da Universidade do Minho, serão interpretadas 3 Obras Sinfónicas do Compositor.

Rapsódia para Piano e Orquestra em Estreia Absoluta, em que será solista a Pianista Madalena Garcia Reis será a primeira obra do Programa de Concerto. Seguir-se-ão "Poema de Maresia" - Obra Sinfónica cuja Temática Central é o Fado - Obra dedicada ao Fadista Carlos do Carmo em que também participam integrados na Orquestra o Guitarrista Hugo Reis (Guitarra Portuguesa) e o Acordeonista Paulo Jorge Ferreira e finalmente "Epifonia" - obra escrita há 40 Anos, apenas uma vez tocada em Portugal.

Os Concertos realizar-se-ão neste Sábado, dia 8 de Junho de 2013 às 21.30H no Salão Medieval da Reitoria da Universidade do Minho em Braga (Largo do Paço) e no Domingo, dia 9 de Junho de 2013 às 21.30H na Igreja de S. Francisco em Guimarães (Largo de S. Francisco).

A Entrada é Livre embora sujeita à lotação dos espaços em que os Concertos se realizam.

Trata-se de uma excelente oportunidade para conhecer algumas das Obras Sinfónicas do Maestro António Victorino d'Almeida e de, simultaneamente, homenagearmos uma das figuras cimeiras da Música e da Cultura Portuguesas.

Reinício do Curso "Saber Ouvir" - Porto

É já na próxima Quinta-Feira, 7 de Março às 18.30H!

Estão abertas as Inscrições.



"SABER OUVIR" - PORTO

Vai reiniciar-se a leccionação do Curso "SABER OUVIR" - PORTO a partir da próxima Quinta-Feira dia 7 de Março entre as 18.30H e as 20.00H na Casa da Madeira, sita à Rua da Torrinha, Nº 55 no Porto.

O Curso será orientado por mim e pelo Maestro António Victorino d'Almeida e decorrerá de Março a Julho de 2013 tendo como Tema: "Música do Século XX e XXI - Portugal e o Mundo".

Estejam atentos a mais notícias e apareçam à Aula (Re)Inaugural...

2º Volume da Antologia Discográfica "SABER OUVIR"

A capa do CD é um fragmento de uma Tela 120X90 - Técnica Mista, intitulada "The Blue Story" - gentilmente cedida pelo Artista Plástico Luís de Matos (N. 1944).

Concerto de Apresentação/Lançamento do 2º Volume da Antologia Discográfica “SABER OUVIR”

Obras para Piano de Eurico Tomás de Lima (1908-1989) pelo Pianista Miguel Campinho

Concerto Comentado por Miguel Leite

No próximo Sábado, dia 23 de Fevereiro às 21.30H no Salão Medieval da Reitoria da Universidade do Minho em Braga realizar-se-á um Concerto de Apresentação/Lançamento de um CD – Patrocinado pela Universidade do Minho - no qual o Pianista Bracarense Miguel Campinho gravou para a Editora Numérica Multimédia a integral das Sonatas e Sonatinas para Piano do Pianista/Compositor Eurico Tomás de Lima.

Este trabalho discográfico, que a partir de agora ficará acessível ao público em geral, constitui o 2º Volume da Antologia Discográfica “SABER OUVIR”, coordenada artisticamente por Miguel Leite, no qual se registou pela primeira vez (1ª Gravação Mundial) um conjunto de obras pianísticas de referência deste notável compositor português cujo espólio artístico se encontra à guarda da Universidade do Minho por oportuna e generosa doação do único filho do Compositor – Eurico Adolfo Lapa Thomaz de Lima, o qual marcará presença na cerimónia.

Assim, e nas palavras do Magnífico Reitor da Universidade do Minho – Prof. Dr. António M. Cunha …”A edição deste CD com as obras de Eurico Tomás de Lima é um tributo a um compositor e pianista de referência cujo percurso se cruzou com a região e as cidades onde a Universidade do Minho está ancorada, para além de ser um modo muito feliz de concretizar o protocolo que a Universidade subscreveu no âmbito do legado do seu espólio.

Acresce que se insere perfeitamente no cumprimento da terceira missão da Instituição: a interação com a sociedade, no domínio da produção e difusão cultural, em particular, na divulgação de músicos clássicos portugueses.

A qualidade desta edição, honra todos estes objetivos e, em especial, a memória de Eurico Tomás de Lima, evidenciando o seu génio e originalidade, beneficiando do empenho e competência que o pianista Miguel Campinho e o editor Miguel Leite colocaram na mesma.”

O Reitor da Universidade do Minho abrirá solenemente a cerimónia dirigindo algumas palavras aos presentes após o que se realizará um Concerto Comentado por Miguel Leite no qual o Pianista Miguel Campinho interpretará ao vivo algumas das Obras Pianísticas de Eurico Tomás de Lima agora gravadas em CD.

Segundo o Coordenador Artístico da Antologia Discográfica, a Edição deste CD Duplo constitui um acontecimento musical pouco comum em Portugal, porquanto acaba de ficar registado para a posteridade um conjunto de obras musicais de grande valia artística de um grande Pianista/Compositor Português cujo legado importa divulgar, estudar e publicar, seja em gravações, seja na muito útil edição de partituras das suas obras musicais.

Após se ter gravado no 1º Volume da Antologia um conjunto de pequenas obras para piano que davam a conhecer ao público uma breve panorâmica do percurso criativo de Eurico Tomás de Lima ao longo de 4 décadas de produção artística, com este 2º Volume (que é um CD Duplo), complementa-se a Antologia com a gravação das 4 Grandes Sonatas para Piano do Compositor, 2 Sonatinas, bem como a Suite “Algarve” e a Suite “Férias na Madeira” – tudo obras pianísticas de grande fôlego, de grande dificuldade técnica e interpretativa, da maior importância no catálogo de obras deste compositor.

Pode até mesmo afirmar-se que, exceptuando algumas pequenas peças para piano do compositor, a edição destes 2 Volumes da Antologia constituem praticamente a Edição da Obra Integral para Piano Solo de Eurico Tomás de Lima (1908-1989).

Esta iniciativa da Universidade do Minho, de entrada livre, é um convite a todos aqueles que não hesitem em honrar a memória de um grande artista português, cuja obra musical, até há bem pouco tempo, era praticamente desconhecida de quase todos os portugueses.

Legenda das Imagens Publicadas: 1 - Capa do CD; 2 - Foto de Eurico Tomás de Lima; 3 - Foto Eurico Tomás de Lima (Inauguração dos Estúdios da RTP Porto em 27/10/1959);  4 - Foto Eurico Tomás de Lima; 5 - Contracapa do CD contendo Listagem Total de Obras Gravadas e Minutagens.

Notas de Programa gravadas em AudioTexto Bilíngue: Português e Inglês pela

Dra. Maria Amélia Carvalho - ILCH/BabeliUM.