Ernesto Concerts Captivate Through the Particularly Original and Charming Way She Presents Her Performances
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557687bk Nazareth US 15/11/2004 02:58pm Page 4 Iara Behs Iara Behs is one of Brazil’s most successful concert pianists. Her Ernesto concerts captivate through the particularly original and charming way she presents her performances. The artist herself arouses the interest and curiosity of her audience in the works she is about to NAZARETH play with an informative introduction, where her knowledge of English, German, Spanish, Dutch and Polish as well as her native Portuguese serves her extremely well in view of the international character of her venues. Besides her activity as a performer Tangos, Waltzes and Polkas herself, she is also engaged in training and motivating younger players. Her knowledge of the music of her native Brazil is not Odeon • Brejeiro • Apanhei-te Cavaquinho merely reflected in her performances on stage but is also passed on to others through her master classes on interpretation for students of the piano. Born in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, Iara Behs, Piano Iara Behs completed her piano studies there, before continuing her studies in Germany, from 1989 onwards, at the State Photograph by Adam Bernard Academy for Music in Karlsruhe, and participating in master- classes and music festivals in both Europe and South America together with pianists such as Bruno Canino, Rudolph Kehrer, Roberto Szidon, Lev Vlasenko, Homero Magalhaes, Dinorah Varsi, Miguel Proença and others, which greatly deepened and extended the breadth of her vision of music. Iara Behs’s career as a pianist has already been crowned with a great deal of success. She won first prize in the Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra’s Competition for Young Soloists and was named the ‘best interpreter of Brazilian music’ in a piano competition held by the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. Her activity as a concert pianist has seen her perform in the most famous concert halls in Brazil and Europe, among others the Cecília Meireles Hall in Rio de Janeiro and the Palais de la Musique et des Congrès in Strasburg. She has also made recordings for radio and appeared on television. Naxos Radio Over 50 Channels of Classical Music • Jazz, Folk/World, Nostalgia Accessible Anywhere, Anytime • Near-CD Quality www.naxosradio.com 8.557687 4 557687bk Nazareth US 15/11/2004 02:58pm Page 2 Ernesto Nazareth ( 1863–1934) basis for his song Sertaneja. The polka Ameno Resedá the eighteenth century. The romantic waltz Epônina has Tangos, Waltzes and Polkas bears the name of an old Carnival group from Rio. The a girl’s name as its title, while the ambiguously named left hand imitates the cavaquinho, a small guitar used by Escorregando, suggests sliding, going down well (as a Even until a few years ago, only very few pianists of The term tango was used for the first time in Brazil to popular musicians in Brazil. This is succeeded by the delicious meal goes down) or telling a tall story. In serious intentions dared to include music by Ernesto designate certain characteristic pieces which were very waltz Turbilhão de Beijos, whirlwind of kisses, and Tenebroso, gloomy, Nazareth instructs the player to Nazareth in their repertoire, since he was not held to be similar in style to the habanera, the latter having arrived Gaúcho, the Brazilian cowboy, and also the name given imitate a guitar in the lower register, and in Odeon, an truly a so-called ‘classical’ composer. His works from Cuba in 1866, soon to become very popular. It was to the inhabitants of the southernmost state in Brazil, the old cinema in Rio showing silent films in which suffered from a certain amount of prejudice and were through his tangos that Nazareth achieved the greatest Rio Grande do Sul, to whom Nazareth dedicated this Nazareth worked as a musician, the left hand also not among those played in schools of music or in degree of originality. piece after a visit in 1932. Plangente, in lamentation, is imitates a guitar. Apanhei-te Cavaquinho (I have classical piano competitions, yet I cannot remember Ernesto Nazareth was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1863 a tango written in the style most nearly approximating to grabbed you, cavaquinho!) has the left hand imitating having met anyone who did not like his music. The and witnessed both the emancipation of the slaves and the habanera, and Topázio Líquido, liquid topaz, refers the cavaquinho in this choro, while the right hand takes charisma of Nazareth’s works was, even then, more the establishment of the republic. In his youth he was in its title to topaz-coloured beer, and was dedicated by on the rôle of a flute. This combination of instruments is powerful than all of the discussions as to which engaged by music publishers and paid to play in their the composer to an old brewery. Ouro Sobre Azul, gold much loved in Brazilian popular music. particular genre his music belongs. establishments, thus encouraging people to buy the on blue, refers to something very beautiful or becoming, During Nazareth’s own lifetime, musical and music he played, which included his own. Later, after and Sarambeque is a suggestive dance of African origin, Iara Behs (www.iarabehs.com) cultural tastes were based on those prevalent in Europe. the invention of the silent film, he was given a contract which was also danced in wealthy white households in English translation by Alan Metcalfe This subordination to European culture did not, for a at the Odeon cinema, where he enlivened the films with long period, allow genuinely Brazilian classical music his accompaniment or entertained the public in the fully to blossom. The trendsetters were from the old entrance lobby. Audiences were enchanted by the continent. On one occasion, the attempt to include four originality of his compositions. One famous name of Nazareth’s works in the concert programme of the among those who heard him was Villa-Lobos, who National School of Music in Rio de Janeiro led to such considered the music of Nazareth to be the very protests that the police had to be called in to intervene. embodiment of the soul of Brazil. Nazareth’s dances aim to please a discerning Nazareth’s life was marked by a series of emotional concert audience and are surely successful in doing so. crises culminating in permanent and incurable mental These works are, first and foremost, original, and are illness, which led, in 1933, to his being committed to a expressions of the Brazilian soul. With them, the psychiatric clinic from which he escaped in the composer certainly wrote musical history and laid the following year only to drown in a reservoir. His burial foundations for an authentically Brazilian style of took place during the Carnival, a festival that dominates classical music. both heart and soul in Brazil, and thus his death passed Nazareth’s output is made up predominantly of almost unnoticed. The story has it that, when Nazareth’s Brazilian tangos, over eighty in all, and more than forty lifeless body was found, his arms were bent, as if he waltzes, and it is particularly in the latter that the rather were playing the piano. intriguing influence of Chopin on his work can The titles of his works are often very humorous or undoubtedly be felt. Nazareth studied the Polish refer to everyday situations in Brazil, especially to the composer’s scores in order to teach himself how to life of the cariocas, or inhabitants of the city of Rio de improve his method of composition, and he also often Janeiro. Sometimes the titles suggest the instruments performed Chopin’s works on the piano. Like Chopin which are imitated in the piece. Of the works I have himself, he devoted a large part of his creative energies chosen to record the boisterous Espalhafatoso is to writing for the piano, the instrument of which he followed by a mischievous Brejeiro and the melancholy himself was a master. waltz Confidências. Escovado, well dressed or cunning, The first Brazilian tango appeared in the year 1871, is followed by Nenê, baby, a child or loved one, a work nine years before its melancholy Argentinian brother. used by the composer Catullo da Paixão Cearence as the 8.557687 2 3 8.557687 557687bk Nazareth US 15/11/2004 02:58pm Page 2 Ernesto Nazareth ( 1863–1934) basis for his song Sertaneja. The polka Ameno Resedá the eighteenth century. The romantic waltz Epônina has Tangos, Waltzes and Polkas bears the name of an old Carnival group from Rio. The a girl’s name as its title, while the ambiguously named left hand imitates the cavaquinho, a small guitar used by Escorregando, suggests sliding, going down well (as a Even until a few years ago, only very few pianists of The term tango was used for the first time in Brazil to popular musicians in Brazil. This is succeeded by the delicious meal goes down) or telling a tall story. In serious intentions dared to include music by Ernesto designate certain characteristic pieces which were very waltz Turbilhão de Beijos, whirlwind of kisses, and Tenebroso, gloomy, Nazareth instructs the player to Nazareth in their repertoire, since he was not held to be similar in style to the habanera, the latter having arrived Gaúcho, the Brazilian cowboy, and also the name given imitate a guitar in the lower register, and in Odeon, an truly a so-called ‘classical’ composer. His works from Cuba in 1866, soon to become very popular. It was to the inhabitants of the southernmost state in Brazil, the old cinema in Rio showing silent films in which suffered from a certain amount of prejudice and were through his tangos that Nazareth achieved the greatest Rio Grande do Sul, to whom Nazareth dedicated this Nazareth worked as a musician, the left hand also not among those played in schools of music or in degree of originality.