NEW RELEASE: Americascapes

Robert Treviño's third album for Ondine is his second with the Basque National Orchestra, and follows their highly successful Ravel album. This release finds the Texan-born, Mexican-American conductor back on home turf, with a traversal of four remarkable yet little-known works by great American composers – including the world premiere recording of Howard Hanson's Before The Dawn (1920).

The other works comprise Charles Loeffler's mighty tone poem La mort de Tintagiles (1897), Carl Ruggles's Evocations (1943) and Henry Cowell's Variations For Orchestra (1956).

"This is very much a passion project," says Treviño, "We took a long time to select the right four works. I wanted to find American musical benchmarks of exceptional quality, from the epic tapestry of the Loeffler, through the brilliance of the Ruggles and the wonderful discovery of the Hanson to the mind-blowing inventions of the Cowell. And whereas we always tend to talk about American composers in terms of how they were influenced by European music, here we have four figures whose own influence stretched back across the Atlantic, and elsewhere. And you can hear that sense of creation and innovation in each of these works. But even putting that aside, these are also just four really, really fantastic pieces of music that more people need to hear!"

Treviño's two previous albums for Ondine have been extremely well-received. The Ravel album has received no fewer than six 'Recording of the Week'-style accolades (including from Radio France, ABC Classic FM, Record Geijutsu and Limelight) and excellent reviews in Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine and many others. This month's issue of the leading French magazine Classica awards the album five stars and states in its review, "Treviño decisively announces himself, at 37, as a rising star. This Ravel selection can stand shoulder-to-shoulder alongside the great Ravel specialists...the Basque National Orchestra is of great quality, with a strong yet refined tone, and perfectly attuned soloists...Treviño imposes an implacable rhythmic precision...able to demand extreme tension and a sense of overwhelming violence...but also an infinite harmonic subtlety, a flexibility and transparency of sound."

And Treviño's complete Beethoven symphonies set, with the Malmo Symphony Orchestra, received some similarly enthusiastic accolades, with BBC Radio 3's Record Review saying, "These are performances that deliver such freshness and vitality. (There is) so much to enjoy...from the fierce animation of storms in the Pastoral Symphony to wonderful expressive detail in the adagio of Number Four...(and a) decisive performance of the Ninth." And Apple Music noted that "Robert Treviño (is) rapidly ascending as one of the world's most exciting young conductors."

The accompanying booklet for 'Americascapes' includes an essay by the Pulitzer Prize-winning music journalist Tim Page, and a personal note by Treviño.

WATCH the trailer for 'Americascapes'.