Nazareth: Cubanos

Joshua Rifkin is a musical polymath - a Bach scholar and a Ragtime specialist. His performances of Ragtime are gentle and inviting and in this wonderful recording of Rags and Tangos (made in 1990 for Decca) he treats us to a Scott Joplin-free exploration of music from this genre.

Nazareth was a Brazilian composer who explored the fusion of Afro-Brazilian musical elements and European classical traditions. His concerts were mainly at theatres, hotels, and cinemas; especially at the famous Cinema Odeon in Rio de Janeiro, where his performances would take place at the waiting room of the cinema and where he became so popular, that people used to go to the Odeon to hear Nazareth, instead of watching the films. “After I heard the music of Nazareth, I finally understood the meaning of Brazilian soul.” remarked Darius Milhaud to Villa-Lobos in his arrival in Rio de Janeiro in 1916.