Leon Bosch: Treasures from the New World, Vol.4: Brazilian Piano Quintets

The Strad Issue: November 2026

Description: Plenty to entice the ear in this thought-provoking series

Musicians: Clélia Iruzun (piano) I Musicanti/Leon Bosch (double bass)

Works: Music by Barnabé, Rezende, Ripper, Vieira and Villani-Côrtes

Catalogue number: SOMM SOMMCD0729

With Brazilian pianist Clélia Iruzun as a constant, this series now reaches its fourth instalment and, like vol.2, the programme here is all Brazilian. Iruzun is also reunited with Leon Bosch, having previously worked with his chamber group I Musicanti on Somm’s release of music by British-Israeli composer-conductor Nimrod Borenstein.

The five composers here were born within a 30-year span (with the oldest of them, Edmundo Villani-Côrtes, still alive at 95) and, even though there is some stylistic variety, not every piece is of uniform quality. Villani-Côrtes’s Five Miniaturas brasileiras open with a simple, gently bittersweet ‘Prelúdio’ that could be a perfect theme for a weepie romance (which is no criticism) but by the end of the suite we might feel that simple has tipped over into simplistic.

There’s an injection of minimalism in the first movement of João Guilherme Ripper’s From My Window no.3, the busy ostinato reflecting street crowds at carnival time, and the third movement evoking Rio’s samba clubs. By contrast Villani-Côrtes’s Caratinguê offers local colour of a more rural kind.

Brooding contemplation stalks the middle movement of Amaral Vieira’s Fronteiras (‘Frontiers’), a quality also found in Marisa Rezende’s Cismas (‘Schisms’), the most original and modernistic music here.

The playing throughout is warm and committed, and the recorded quality excellent, making this an appealing discovery for the curious.

EDWARD BHESANIA