Album Notes

Exclusive first recordings of Glazunov's Oriental Reverie and Bosmans' String Quartet. All members of Quinteto AMIZADE are internationaly recognised artists, a group founded in Brasil by the hungarian professor Thurzo Sandor Joszef. You can also listen to some fine instruments, like the Villaume viola and the Sanctus Seraphin violin.

The Quinteto Amizade was founded on Epiphany of 2003 for annual short seasons, restricted to the weeks that Sándor visits Brasil, exciting his friends with his musical enthusiasm.

The program presented here was first recorded in a concert at the Brasilia Music School in January 20th of 2004, the first available recording of these masterpieces by Bosmans and Glazunov, which we decided to record again for the present edition.

The Oriental Reverie was finished on March 13 1886 by Alexander Glazunov, the important Russian composer, teacher and conductor. The piece is an elaboration of a previous composition, the Adagio for 2 clarinets. In the next year he wrote a version for orchestra, but expressed his desire to publish the original work presented here.

The “3 Epigrams” show the lyricism and the high spirit of all Bosmans’s compositions. Originally written for string quartet, the composer himself added the double-bass part for a chamber orchestra version, also writing another arrangement for cello quartet.

This recording finishes with a concertino-like quintet composed by Weber in 1815, its drama and lyricism reminiscent of his opera arias.

The choice of these (neo-Romantic) pieces mirrors the name of our group '" which means friendship. We made our traditional concert on Epiphany of 2005 in the welcoming chapel of the Benedictine Monastery, in Brasília, days before our studio recordings. An elegant man anxiously called out to me about the last piece I announced that night. As he knew it was Borodin´s Second Quartet, he showed me the shiny wedding ring on his finger explaining that he had proposed to his girlfriend as that music played!

With this inspiring spirit we wish to carry happiness to all through good music!

Arthur Bosmans (Oct. 13, 1908 '" May 14, 1991). Virtually self-taught, Arthur Bosmans's trajectory was marked by determination and unstinting efforts to fulfil his musical vocation. He was born in Brussels and received Brazilian citizenship in 1953. He started his musical studies at five. In Antwerp he entered the Naval School, reaching the grade of First Lieutenant after seven years of service. He left the Navy in 1932 and dedicated himself to composition and conducting, notably the Antwerp Philharmonic Orchestra. He moved to Brazil in 1940, firstly to Rio de Janeiro where he conducted the Brazilian Symphonic Orchestra. After that, in Belo Horizonte, he finally assumed the chair of composition and conducting at the Music School of the University of Minas Gerais State (UFMG) and directed the State and Municipal Orchestras. He won the “Cesar Franck Award of symphonic composition” with his masterpiece “La Rue”, written in 1932, besides receiving several decorations of a cultural order from Belgium, France, Brazil, Spain, Holland. As a conductor he directed the Brazilian première of many works by Ravel, Prokofiev and Ginastera, also abroad introduced pieces by Brazilian compositors such as Mignone, Krieger, Gnattali and Fernandez.