Lopos-Graca: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2

The music of Fernando Lopes-Graça, one of the most significant Portuguese composers of the twentieth century, went through several phases of development. Though rooted in folk music, it absorbed influences not only from much earlier composers such as Scarlatti and Seixas, but from contemporaries such as Bartók. These influences are potent in the Piano Concerto No. 1 of 1940, a highly personal, atmospheric and superbly orchestrated work imbued with bittersweet romanticism. Though the Iberian Baroque permeates its finale, the Piano Concerto No. 2 is a much darker and more ambivalent work, marking a new milestone in his development.

Fernando Lopes-Graça collected the folksongs of his native Portugal, and his early compositions were strongly influenced by such music. Later he was influenced by Bartók and Stravinsky. The Piano Concertos represent two of his most contrasting and absorbing works. The First is richly atmospheric, the post-War Second Concerto dark. Both embed Spanish Baroque music, but are in no way pastiche works. Their appeal is direct due to imaginative orchestration and strong themes.