Oscuro

On this new Albany release, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players team up with Chanticleer to record composer Pablo Ortiz’s Oscuro, a work they jointly commissioned. Oscuro uses madrigals as a jumping off point to illuminate dark-themed texts by poets Francisco Alarcón and Amado Nervo. The contrapuntal treatment of lines like como loca flor, en lo oscuro brota (like a crazed flower it buds in the dark), rapturously lay upon one another, quietly propelling the work forward by torchlight. It feels familiar, but you never know what’s down there at the end of that darkened hallway.

—RN