Believe it or not, there’s serious competition available in this music, and direct comparison reveals this disc to be a non-starter. Both the Sinfonietta and the Concerto in D can be enjoyed in finer sound, more emphatically played, on a Koch disc featuring the Orquesta Clássica do Porto conducted by Meir Minsky. That disc also gives you three more works: Staccato brilhante, Divertimento No. 2, and the Elegy to Vianna da Motta. In addition, I Musici di Montréal under Yuli Turovsky recorded the Concerto for Chandos, the most virtuosic performance of all if not necessarily the most idiomatic. The Sinfonietta belongs among the composer’s later, more dissonant works, and may well evoke the shade of Bartók in his nocturnal, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta mode. The Concerto ranks with similar string orchestra works of Vaughan Williams, Tippett, and Britten as yet another masterful British contribution to the medium. Except that Santos is Portuguese. Play the finale and fool your friends–just not with this recording.
