New England String Quartet - Cervetti: Unbridled (2014)

Wall Street. Salvador Dali. Gustav Mahler. Some of the sources of inspiration for composer Sergio Cervetti on his fourth solo Navona release, UNBRIDLED. Spanning over forty years of his career, the works represent Cervetti’s continued aesthetic of combining traditional and postmodern techniques and instrumentation.

The title track is a response to the crisis of the American financial institutions of the last few years. For Mémoires du Paradis, Cervetti’s vision comes from five Salvador Dali paintings that portray fragmentary scenes from Milton’s Paradise Lost. First premiered in 1973, …from the earth… treats a five-note passage from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with minimalist techniques, extrapolating the notes into new melodies and drawing out harmonic structures for several minutes. A review from the now defunct High Fidelity magazine hailed …from the earth… as “a straightforward and touching composition, and obviously the work of a gifted creator.”

Sergio Cervetti, born in Uruguay, moved to the United States in 1962 to study composition at the Peabody Conservatory and quickly gained international recognition as a composer, winning the chamber music prize at the Caracas, Venezuela Music Festival in 1966. From 1972 to 1997 and again in 2007 to 2008, Cervetti was Master Teacher of Music at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.