Featuring world premiere recordings of works by Chilean composers including Rafael Díaz, Carlos Botto, Federico Heinlein, David Cortés, and a special tribute to Juan Orrego-Salas
Release date: October 9, 2020 on New Focus Recordings
"Sixteen days before Silvie and I walked into the studio for our first day of recording, the composer Juan Orrego-Salas passed away. I carried that sorrow into the studio alongside his score in my hands and remember feeling an intense gratitude for his music, as well as a huge responsibility," reflects violist Georgina Rossi on the recording of her debut CD, “MOBILI”. It is a project that is both deeply personal for Ms. Rossi, and groundbreaking for the compositional voices of Chile, as it is the first ever album dedicated to Chilean music for viola.
Together with award-winning pianist Silvie Cheng, Ms. Rossi – who herself was born and raised in Santiago – performs the world premiere recordings of works by Rafael Díaz, Carlos Botto, Federico Heinlein, and David Cortés. The title track of the album comes from Juan Orrego-Salas’ MOBILI for viola and piano. One of Chile’s foremost composers, Juan Orrego-Salas taught at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music for 25 years, where he founded the Latin American Music Center in 1962. Orrego-Salas was passionately dedicated to encouraging Chilean cultural engagement, and was awarded the Chilean National Prize for the Arts in Music in 1992. Recorded in honor of his centennial, this album is dedicated to his memory. "MOBILI" is released on New Focus Recordings (FCR268) on October 9, 2020; an LP version is scheduled for release early next year.
Composed for both Ms. Rossi and her mother, Penelope Knuth, Rafael Díaz’s Will There Be Someone Whose Hands Can Sustain This Falling for amplified viola is guided by the prayer-songs of indigenous peoples in the Andes which the composer collected during ethnomusicological fieldwork. Díaz’s other work on the album, In The Depths of My Distance Your House Emerges, is the sound image of a decades-old memory – the composer walking to school in Chilean Patagonia.
Carlos Botto’s Fantasia para viola y piano, Op. 15 reveals a spontaneous and independent personality. Its wandering musical ideas develop leisurely, moving through contrasting tempi and frequent changes in character. Federico Heinlein’s output reflects his unique German-Hispanic background, diverse influences, and a lifelong passion for poetry, as with his Duo for viola and piano, on whose score the composer noted, “Do not go gentle,” a reference to the poem by Dylan Thomas. David Cortés was inspired by the astronomical wonders of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in his Tololo. In the words of the composer, “Tololo is an homage to the Coquimbo region. The sounds, landscapes, and sensations that belong to it define me both as musician and individual.”
“MOBILI: Music for Viola and Piano from Chile”
Georgina Rossi, viola
Silvie Cheng, piano
World premiere recordings of works by Chilean composers
New Focus Recordings FCR268
Release date: October 9, 2020
TRACKS
Rafael Díaz
1 ¿Habrá alguien que en sus manos sostenga este caer? 10:40 LISTEN
for amplified viola
2 Al fondo de mi lejanía se asoma tu casa for viola and piano 6:01
Carlos Botto
3 Fantasía op.15 for viola and piano 9:25
Federico Heinlein
4 Dúo “Do not go gentle” for viola and piano 9:48 LISTEN
David Cortés (arr. Miguel Farías)
5 Tololo for viola and string orchestra 11:25
Juan Orrego-Salas
Mobili op.63 for viola and piano
6 Flessibile 4:29
7 Discontinuo 2:50
8 Ricorrente 7:18
9 Perpetuo 3:13
Carlos Guastavino (arr. Kim Kashkashian, Robert Levin)
10 El Sampedrino 3:48
Chilean-American violist Georgina Isabel Rossi has performed as soloist with the Orquesta Sinfónica Uncuyo, in Mendoza, and the Orquesta de Cámara de Chile, and enjoys a varied career on stage in North and South America. Santiago-born, she moved to Michigan on a Chilean national grant at sixteen to study at Interlochen Arts Academy. Ms Rossi is a member of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and a Fellow of the Toronto and Bowdoin Summer Music Festivals. She holds a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Roger Tapping, and a Bachelor of Music from the Manhattan School of Music, where she was a student of Karen Dreyfus and Daniel Avshalomov. Ms. Rossi plays a 2014 viola made by Leonardo Anderi in Buenos Aires and an 1820 bow by Carl Wilhelm Knopf. Based in New York City, Ms. Rossi is also a visual artist and focuses on draftsmanship.
Lauded for her “extraordinarily varied palette” (WholeNote Magazine) and “purely magical” playing (New York Concert Review), Tokyo-born Chinese-Canadian pianist Silvie Cheng illuminates musical works with her exquisite touch at the keyboard. Since her Carnegie Hall solo debut in 2011, she has performed internationally as a recitalist, collaborative pianist, and soloist including at New York's Steinway Hall, Merkin Hall, Brussels' Flagey Hall; Shanghai's Poly Theatre; South Korea's Alpensia Concert Hall, among many other acclaimed venues, and with Symphony Nova Scotia, the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles. Her awards include top prizes at the Thousand Islands and Heida Hermanns International Piano Competition, the Canadian Music Competition National Finals, the Ontario Music Federation Association Competition, and the Lillian Fuchs Chamber Music Competition.