Download Enrique Soro Tres aires chilenos

PROGRAM NOTES
by Phillip Huscher
Enrique Soro
Born July 15 1884, Concepción, Chile.
Died December 3, 1954, Santiago, Chile.
Tres aires chilenos
This work was composed in 1942. It is scored for three flutes and piccolo, two oboes, three clarinets and
bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, four trombones, two harps, timpani, bass drum,
cymbals, side drum, and strings. Performance time is approximately fourteen minutes.
This work was composed in 1942. It is scored for three flutes and piccolo, two oboes, three clarinets and
bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, four trombones, two harps, timpani, bass drum,
cymbals, side drum, and strings. Performance time is approximately fourteen minutes.
Enrique Soro began studying piano and music theory with his father, José Soro Sforza, an Italian
composer who was living in Chile. The tables were turned when, at the age of fourteen, Enrique won a
Chilean government scholarship to study in Italy and left Chile to attend the Milan Conservatory. After
graduating in 1904, he returned to his homeland, where he taught piano and composition at the Santiago
Conservatory; he later became the director. Soro is credited with composing Chile’s first full-length
symphony, the Sinfonia romántica of 1921. Although the symphony recalls the romantic orchestral
tradition that was popular in Chile during his formative years, Soro has written many works that also draw
on native Chilean melodic and rhythmic traits.
Jane Vial Jaffe writes:
The Tres aires chilenos date from 1942, composed while the composer was in Chile’s port city of
Puerto Montt. The Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile gave the premiere the same year. Throughout,
Soro employs traditional Western instruments in his Chilean tunes in a manner that would have
made a name for him in Hollywood. His liltingly sentimental first movement pauses for a moment
of calm before its grand ending, his second movement features sweet violin solos to frame its
livelier middle section, and his lively final movement evokes a Chilean dance with its rhythmic
patterns and modal inflections.
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
© Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All rights reserved. Program notes may be reproduced only in their
entirety and with express written permission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs subject to
change without notice.