Clara Rodriguez

Venezuelan Treasures for Piano 9: Modesta Bor Part 2

Clifton Edition and pianist Clara Rodriguez present the ninth volume in the Venezuelan Treasures for Piano series, the second collection devoted to Modesta Bor. Spanning music from the early 1950s to the final decades of her life, the volume traces Bor's search for an expressive language that united rigorous compositional technique with the rhythms, melodies and traditions of Venezuela. A distinguished pianist, choral conductor and teacher, Bor believed that composers should study and safeguard their country's musical roots, transforming them through an honest and individual artistic voice.

The collection ranges from exercises and short works for developing pianists to music of striking rhythmic and harmonic sophistication. The folkloric Suite Criolla draws on the Polo Margariteño, nineteenth-century song and the energy of Venezuelan dance, while works written around Bor's studies with Aram Khachaturian in Moscow reveal the influence of Prokofiev, Kabalevsky and Shostakovich. Her later Sarcasmos para piano mark a decisive move towards a more eclectic, dissonant and atonal style, combining bold harmonic blocks and rhythmic ostinatos with transformed echoes of merengue, joropo, the Venezuelan waltz, and the guitar and cuatro. Together, these works reveal a composer of deep conviction whose music speaks with intimacy, vitality and an unmistakably Venezuelan voice.