Carlos Chávez is one of Mexico’s most important and prolific 20th-century composers. He championed the symphony form at a time when it was generally neglected by other Latin American composers, and the results are magnificent: when his first symphony Sinfonía de Antígona was premiered in 1933, invoking the best of Mexican tradition in a revived symphonic form, it received a rapturous reception, and led to a burst of inspiration for Chávez, who went on to compose five more symphonies before his death in 1978.

A fantastic recording of a live concert conducted by Carlos Chávez in May 1940 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The program representis an important period in Mexican history, and ranges from a special arrangement of music for Aztec instruments of the 16th century to the popular Huapangos, the gay love songs of the Mariachi and the traditional Yaqui music.

Soli I is the first of a series of four works by the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, each called Soli and each featuring a succession of instrumental solos. Three of these compositions are chamber music, and the remaining one is a sort of concerto grosso for four soloists and orchestra. This first work of the series is a quartet for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and trumpet.

Soles is a half-hour long ballet “after a Nahua tradition” from 1925 and is in the composer’s nationalistic style (you may think of Villa-Lobos now and again) while the 21-minute Pirámide (1968) is of sterner stuff tonally speaking but always rhythmically gripping.

Carlos Chávez was one of the most influential champions of modern Mexican concert music. He was passionate about his Mexican musical heritage, and recognized this richness. In 1928, he helped to organize the Orquesta Sinfónica de México and was its principal conductor until 1949, when the orchestra became the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, as it is now known.