ANTÓNIO VICTORINO D'ALMEIDA (b.1940): The Sound Factory, Op. 45 (Maria de Medeiros [narrator], Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra; António Victorino D'Almeida), Pluharlieder, Op. 74 (Erika Pluhar [voice], Bruckner Orchestra Linz; D'Almeida).

Description: Those of you who liked this composer's Symphony No. 1 and three other orchestral pieces which we offered back in December (12K013) will want to consider this unusual pairing too: The Sound Factory is a 50-minute - well, what to call it? How about a "Charlie Chaplin silent-movie dream fantasy"? In six segments, each introduced (in Portuguese) by a Portuguese film-star (D'Almeida's daughter!), we are given an orchestral spectacular silent film score based on a sound factory that produces ugly, horrible noise and the little tramp's attempt to bring pretty sounds into it. We get to hear a huge orchestra in snatches of Iron Foundry cum Turangalîla cum Italian Futurism, shot through with and gradually changing to 1920's American popular music and waltzes, all gorgeously orchestrated as we now know is a D'Almeida specialty. The 25-minute set of Pluhar songs delivered by the care-worn, smoky voice of the poetess/diseuse, puts us squarely into a decadent cabaret in 20s Weimar Germany (or Austria) where one can feel the world outside crumbling under hyper-inflation and the brown-shirts are sharpening their knives in the alleys outside. What a chameleon D'Almeida is! German-English texts.