JORGE PEIXINHO (1940-1995): 5 Pequenas Peças, Sucessões Simétricas I, Estudos I-III, Glosa I, In Folio "Para Constança", Estudo V "Die Reihe Courante", Harmónicos I, Janeira, Red Sweet Tango, Villalbarosa, Nocturno.

Description: An important figure in the Portuguese avant garde, Peixinho was influenced by Webern, Cage, Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono, among others, and traces of these diverse influences can be felt in these piano pieces. The works from the 1960s are highly accomplished Darmstadt fare, with the clusters and pianistic acrobatism of Stockhausen's piano pieces alongside taut serial organization; for example, the first several Studies. But the composer seems to have found any particular compositional dogma too restricting, as there are also works here with graphically notated scores and a high degree of aleatoric content, such as Harmónicos I of 1967, improvised by instructions, and emerging as a very impressionistic study in resonance and timbre. And again, the further legacy of Cage, preparation of the piano (in Estudio II) and direct contact with the strings. An oddity is the little Janeira, a children's piece, somewhat Bartókian, from 1995. The later works - from the 1980s and 90s - display a freer vocabulary than the early ones, reaching a peak in Estudio V (1992), a work of formidable virtuosity and greater richness of piano texture than anything else here, and the Nocturno, from the same year, includes material that is sumptuously chordal; not tonal, but certainly involving a kind of harmonic thinking that 1970s Darmstadt could not have accepted. 2 CDs. Miguel Borges Coelho (piano).