Amaro Dubois & Tingting Yao: Luz
Navona Records

When determining programming for a recording, most viola-and-piano duos typically orient their selections around single themes or concepts. Deviating from that strategy, Brazilian violist Amaro Dubois and pianist Tingting Yao present two sets of music, Latin-American and African-American, on their debut Navona Records release. It's a rare album that combines Brazilian composers Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) and Edmundo Villani-Cortes (b. 1930) with Florence Price (1887-1953) and William Grant Still (1895-1978), but that's exactly what the duo does on Luz (“light”). Helping to blur the boundaries between the sets are two things in particular, melodic richness and emotion. While the works are formally classical, these lyrical settings register in their brevity and form as songs and as such use melody as the foundation.

Armed with an expressive, vocal-like tone, Dubois is well-suited to the material and repeatedly gives voice to the plaintive yearning that's so much a part of its contents. Yao shows herself to be a terrific partner when she sensitively attunes herself to his every move, be it a tempo adjustment or change in dynamics. Enhancing the appeal of the release, laid down in June 2022 at the University of Memphis's Harris Hall, some of its twelve pieces are recent commissions.

Whereas most classical violists regard flawless purity of tone as an ideal to which to aspire, there's a rawness to Dubois' playing that suggests he's equally focused on conveying emotion in its most direct form. That shouldn't be interpreted to mean his delivery lacks refinement but more to emphasize that his overriding concern is to communicate the spectrum of emotional experience through his instrument. The mournful settings in particular benefit from the vocal-like cry of his playing. Certainly the instrument on which he performs, a viola made in 1970 by the Hungarian luthier Otto Erdesz, also factors significantly into the sound produced.

The emotional dimension is apparent the moment the recording opens with Villani-Cortes's Luz and Dubois, after entering with the softest of breaths, sustains with his partner an almost unbearable degree of tension. Other pieces by Brazilian composers include Cantiga, a stirring exercise in dignified lyricism by Dimitri Cervo (b. 1968), and one of the album's most transporting pieces, Villa-Lobos's haunting O Canto do Cisne Negro (The Song of the Black Swan). Villani-Cortes's other setting, Interlúdio V, is memorable for preceding the duo's playing with the recitation of a poem by the composer.

Price is represented by two lovely pieces, the alternately joyful and wistful Elfentanz, and the mournful Deserted Garden; Luz also features a pair by Still, the poignant lament Here's One and the gently radiant Carmela. Credited to British composer Michael Tippett (1905-98) and arranged by Lawrence Brown, Five Negro Spirituals includes the doleful “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and hymnal “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and amplifies the folk-gospel dimension of Luz in the duo's heartfelt renderings. Neither musician is from the American South, yet they convincingly express the respective heartache and joy of “Nobody Knows de Trouble I've Seen” and “Ev'ry Time I Feel de Spirit” in their playing.

July 2023