Teatro de Marionetas is the Portuguese expression for Puppet Theater. In this work, two puppets, represented by the two tubas, meet for a set of three dances.The first dance named Murmurinho meaning small and soft talk is inspired by “choro” rhythms. The woodblock introduces the two puppets and so the dance begins…however, they are puppets! And, even if they try to dance together they will always seem ‘disarticulated’.The second dance, an Interlude, represents the two puppets falling in love with each other. It is a romance: they sing songs of longing to each. This movement is inspired in morna song genre.Finally, the third movement, Tangos, represents an attempt of the two tubas to dance a tango. But they cannot keep up with each other! And so, we have many Tangos happening at the same time at different tempos. The two puppets finally come to an agreement…at the very last measure. The idea for this piece arose when virtuoso tuba player Sérgio Carolino commissioned this work. I had seen a photo of him that reported his appearance and collaboration with a Puppet Theater in our native country of Portugal. The picture only had a tuba and a puppet and caused quite an impact. When Sérgio Carolino described the idea behind his collaboration with tuba player Anne Jelle Visser, I knew immediately that I had to ‘experiment’ with two puppets!

Azulejos (Tiles) is a group of short movements that forms a unified identity. Each ‘Tile’ or movement complement each other, forming a larger panel of tiles to which more movements could be added in the future.

By Paul Griffiths (Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Concert)

Scope (Dichotomy and Range)

Our ears, more than our eyes, are quick to make associations. Listening to music, we instantly analyse a sound. What instrument? How high or low? How loud? How clear? Where? A succession of sounds will arouse other questions, and already the connections are starting to accumulate—the aspects that, though sometimes called “extra-musical,” are essential to the musical experience, to how music engages the memory and the imagination. This reminds me of hiking in the mountains. This sounds like gentle waves.

In this evening’s program we have relatively short pieces, for limited forces. And yet in each case the scope is wide, the richness that often depends on how the music will find echoes in other areas of our experience: awareness of nature, emotion, other music, other art. Reverberation across a dichotomy creates range.

The opening piece, by Andreia Pinto Correia, invites us to open our listening toward folk song and visual art. An important stimulus for the work came from a recording of a rural work song from the composer’s native Portugal, Tralhoada, which offered a quick study in call-response form, in fast, emphatic rushes up to principal notes, and in hardy drive. In Pinto Correia’s piece, from 2009, the call elements are short, similar, and always repeated. The responses are longer, and mix ideas from the preceding call with others (including a quick, narrow-register dance). Violin and viola suggest a whole string orchestra. A tralhoada, in Portuguese, is a lot of little things—a meaning reflected in the Fragmentos Múltiplos part of the title. But the composer is also referring here to the work of a painter, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-92), who, like her, began life in Portugal but moved abroad (to France for Vieira da Silva, to the United States for Pinto Correia) to complete her education and settle. Vieira da Silva’s paintings are remarkable for their multiple perspectives, and for how they hover between suggesting cityscapes as seen from colliding points of view and being abstract designs of horizontal and vertical lines. The Museum of Modern Art has two Vieira da Silvas, and though these are not on show at the moment, images of them and many others may be found online.