Treasures from the New World

Album review

Somm Recordings presents "Treasures from the New World" – a compelling collection of late-Romantic and contemporary works for piano and string quartet from the Americas brimming with all the colour, energy, and emotion of that great continent. Clélia Iruzun teams up with the Coull Quartet for a varied and vital programme championing the music of her Brazilian compatriots Henrique Oswald and Marlos Nobre and the pioneering American Amy Beach.
Influenced by Brahms and Schumann, Beach’s Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor (1908) is stamped through with a lyrically melancholic and pensive signature all its own. For her Romance for Violin and Piano (1893), a work of hypnotic gracefulness and aching emotions, Iruzun partners with the Coull Quartet’s first violinist, Roger Coull. Receiving its first recording outside of Brazil, Henrique Oswald’s Piano Quintet in C major (1895) was composed in Florence. Imprinted with the European influences he absorbed there, it is lit up by his own gift for heartfelt melody. Marlos Nobre’s Poema XXI – here in its premiere recording – carries itself with a distinctive character drawing on traditional South American dances to produce something effusive, elegant and exotic in equal measure. © Somm Recordings