NOSPR / Florencio / Kowalski / A New Dawn - NOSPR

When, in the third movement of Ronaldo Miranda’s symphonic poem Horizons (1992), the trumpets sound a triumphant fanfare, we know that Christopher Columbus’s caravels are reaching the American shore. A variety of emotions mingle on board: excitement, curiosity, anxiety, and ultimately wonder at the sight that has opened before the crew’s eyes.

The same trumpets take on a very different meaning in the Dawn from Antônio Carlos Gomes’s opera The Slave (1889). Their sound comes from Guanabara Bay, where a Portuguese fleet arrives ready to crush an uprising by the Indigenous inhabitants. The orchestral prelude beautifully evokes the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean, but behind that beauty lies the tragic story of a love affair between a young woman of the Tamoio people and the son of a plantation owner.

Heitor Villa-Lobos’s overture Dawn in a Tropical Forest (1953) provides an opportunity for rather different inhabitants of the region to make themselves heard. Echoes of traditional dances can certainly be discerned in the music, though the calls of tropical birds soon take centre stage. Indeed, the entire rainforest appears to awaken around us. As the composer often remarked, his music gives voice to trees, rivers, mountains, and the sea... 

Ink Dark Moon (2018), a guitar concerto by Joby Talbot, may technically take its leave of Brazil, for the British composer chose instead to reflect the Montenegrin heritage of the work’s dedicatee, Miloš Karadaglić. Even so, one cannot help but wonder, whether there is perhaps something in the Adagio of the second movement that recalls an intimate slow sunrise, and in the final Allegro vigoroso – a fiesta?

Piotr Mika („Ruch Muzyczny”)

Concert duration: approximately 110 minutes

*Publisher: Edições ABM

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