Hekel Tavares - Piano Concerto No. 2 "In Brazilian Forms", Op. 105 (1938)

Hekel Tavares ( Rio Largo, September 16, 1896 – Rio de Janeiro, August 8, 1969 ) was a Brazilian composer, conductor and arranger. He studied piano with an aunt and, as a child, learned harmonica and cavaquinho, but his greatest passion was popular music, especially that which came from the desafios and reisados.

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Concerto para Piano e Orquestra em Formas Brasileiras N. 2, op. 105 (1938)

1. Modinha (Tempo de batuque - lento con simplicita)(0:00)
2. Ponteio (Largo - molto cantabile et expressivo) (6:29)
3. Maracatu (lento ma vigoroso) (13:15)

Arnaldo Cohen, piano and the Orquestra Sinfônica Petrobras Pró Música conducted by Roberto Tibiriçá
Live recording
Buy the sheet music at: sheetmusicplus
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Details by John Henken
The Piano Concerto received its premiere in 1939 from Antonietta Rudge, with the composer conducting. The following year Guiomar Novaes took up the Concerto, which also received U.S. performances by the Chicago Symphony, the NBC Symphony in New York, and the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. It was first recorded in 1952 by Felicja Blumenthal with the London Symphony Orchestra, Anatole Fistoulari conducting.

Each of the Concerto's three movements is identified with one of Tavares' "Brazilian forms." The first movement is a Modinha, a sentimental, popular song genre. The second is a Ponteio, the accompaniment for a type of improvised rhyming competition from northeastern Brazil, and the finale is a Maracatu, an Afro-Brazilian processional dance associated with Carnival in Pernambuco.

The opening movement begins with an introduction marked "Tempo di Batuque," referring to a percussion-based dance accompaniment. Indeed, the whole score is rich in percussion, including traditional instruments such as maracas, the afoché (another type of rattle), and the reco-reco (a wooden scraper). The Modinha itself is a liquid, sighing theme in minor mode, which contrasts sharply with a more crisply accented, rhythmic flourish in major. A little clarinet solo with a Gershwinesque glissando ushers in a condensed reprise. A fast coda of virtuosic give-and-take between the soloist and the orchestra closes the movement.

Pontos de desafio are challenge songs in which singers improvise over a repeating accompaniment, the ponteio. After a placid introduction, the second movement of Tavares' Piano Concerto features just this sort of form and texture, with several thematic "songs," often appearing in the orchestra over the piano accompaniment.

The Maracatu has its origins in the coronation celebrations of African kings, and the processional Carnival dance retains king, queen, and courtiers as characters. Tavares' movement reflects much of this, with a recitative-like introduction imitating the call-to-order of the dama-do-paço, the court mistress of ceremonies. The body of the movement features two slow, intense dances, which build in energy to a lively concluding dance of great exuberance and exaltation.