THE AMERICAN PROJECT

The American Project brings together the Portuguese violinist Bruno Monteiro and the pianist João Paulo Santos, recital partners for 25 years, in music by Scott Joplin, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, John Corigliano and John Williams. In his booklet notes Monteiro presents the programme as a coherent account of American music across the twentieth century, and as a violinistic progression from popular dance through chamber music to theatre and film.

Joplin’s The Ragtime Dance, first performed in Sedalia, Missouri, in 1899 and published in 1902 as a ‘ragtime folk ballet’ with narration and dance instructions, was his attempt to bring ragtime onto the stage as composed art. It is heard here in Itzhak Perlman’s transcription. Copland’s Sonata for Violin and Piano (1942–43) is dedicated to Lieutenant Harry H. Dunham. Ruth Posselt gave the premiere in New York in 1944 with the composer at the piano. The sonata places Copland’s mature idiom within the European sonata tradition, in a mood of restraint and reflection rather than overt folklore.

Three songs from West Side Story follow in Raimundo Penaforte’s arrangement: I Feel Pretty, Somewhere and America. Corigliano’s four-movement Sonata for Violin and Piano (1962–63) was premiered in Spoleto in 1964 and won the Festival of Two Worlds Prize for Chamber Music. It allows tonal, non-tonal and polytonal writing to coexist. Williams’s Fiddler on the Roof grew out of his work on the 1971 film, for which he wrote an extended cadenza for Isaac Stern. In the violin-and-piano edition this material becomes a recital piece in its own right.

Two sonatas thus stand between three works rooted in stage and screen. Together they trace the passage of American music between popular and concert idioms.

The album continues Monteiro’s work for Etcetera. His earlier releases on the label include 20th Century and Forward and Prokofiev’s Two Violin Sonatas and Five Melodies, both nominated for ICMA awards. Santos is Director of Musical and Stage Studies at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon. He is also an opera conductor and a researcher of forgotten Portuguese repertoire.