Customer Reviews

Night of the Mayas: Music of Silvestre Revueltas

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This was my first real introduction to Revueltas's work, and it's an excellent primer to this composer. Propulsive without being bombastic, challenging without being pretentious, it's remarkable and essential music. The performances on this CD serve the music uniformly well; the Orquesta Sinfónica de Jalapa features a remarkable battery of percussion on "La noche de los Mayas."

We now venture to the hot, energetic music of Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) in this collection that Catalyst has brought together of recordings made by different ensembles at different times. This is wild stuff, sounding something like a cross between Mexican dance music and Prokofiev. Although this is not a disk I find myself returning to often, it is one of those disks that I find myself pulling off the shelf every once in a while when I am in one of those, well, Mexican Prokofiev moods. If one of your obsessions in life is trying to figure out what sort of music Prokofiev would have composed had he been born in Mexico, then Night of the Mayas is the answer to your prayers.