London Sinfonietta

A journey through Mexico features striking chamber works by Revueltas and Carrillo's moving and experimental song ‘Preludio a Colón’. Described by Kate Molleson, author of the book 'Sound Within Sound' that inspired this festival, as a ‘confounding mix of absolutist, traditionalist, visionary and shameless revisionist’, Carrillo never ceases to surprise, in his music as well as his words. He boldly blended traditional Western scoring with microtonal experiments that ‘skew the familiar into the uncanny fantastical’, Molleson writes. ‘These works are astonishing and forceful. They intoxicate. They are like nothing else.’ Coined the ‘Mexican Bartók’, Silvestre Revueltas was another avant-garde provocateur of Central American new music that didn’t quite fit the mould. ‘Revueltas was committed to representing the poor in his music… street people, fishermen, factory workers, market sellers. The marginalised, the powerless,’ Molleson writes. Revueltas’ experience of the lives of real people contributed to the rich cacophony of sound that captured the essence of 1930s Mexico.