Lisbon At Twilight - George Melachrino

 

Una Casa Portuguesa

Lisbon At Twilight

George Melachrino

The Melachrino Orchestra Conducted by George Melachrino

Cover Photo: Ewing Krainin

RCA Victor LSP-1762

1958

From the back cover: It makes no difference whether or not you've been to Portugal, you'll never understand Lisbon nightlife of the Portuguese people until you've heard the fado – nostalgic little ballads telling of death, disappointment, drownings, stabbings and general heartbreak. If you like soap operas, you'll love fado.

Best place to hear fado is in the murky little cafes in the old quarter of Lisbon. Some of them used to be wine cellars; many are still lined with the great casks.

The conventions that govern fado singing are as rigid as diplomatic protocol. Two guitarists sit at a table  – one plays the Spanish guitar, and the other plays the Portuguese type with six double strings and a special screw-type tuning. The singer, swathed in a somber black shawl, leans against the stone wall.

You can rate fado spots as one-shawl, two-shawl or three-shawl establishments, depending on whether the singers bring their own or pass the house shawls from shoulder to shoulder as they give out with the blues.

Amateurs can participate, too, and that's  one of the highlights of the evening. After the audience gets warmed up with a few chronicle of blighted romance or foreclosed mortgages under the shawl, the real fun begins. Gentlemen with a grievance stand up and tell you their troubles – in a minor key. Other guests add extemporaneous stanzas or butt in to relate – still in song – how much worse their troubles are than anyone else's. No one in the audience makes a sound or twitches a muscle during the song. Even if your Portuguese is nonexistent, you can enjoy the spirit – because when it comes to the fado the Portuguese people have a wonderful time feeling terrible.

This album of Portuguese music will run you approximately $450 less than the round-trip economy-class air fare between New York and Lisbon, and next to being there it's the best way to catch the beat. George Melachrino set out to record authentic songs of Portugal in an instrumental setting after a visit last year. The Portuguese guitarist Raul Nery flew over to London to sit in on the recording sessions. He's one of the world's greatest virtuosos on this unusual instrument, and his ability to play from memory almost one thousand tunes has won him the title of "The Musical Memory Man." And Great Britain contributed her favorite guitarist, the popular Ivor Mairants.

The most famous of all fados starts off Side 2. As April In Portugal it became a world favorite, but under its original title of Coimbra it had been a popular fado for years. Barco Negro, originally called Black Mother, comes from the Cape Verde Islands, a Portuguese possession in the Atlantic off the coast of  West Africa – therefore its strongly African beat. It was first popularized by the famed Amalia, perhaps the greatest fado singer of them all. Song Of The Sea, at the end of Side 1, is a beautiful number that was featured in the film "April In Portugal." Una Casa Portuguesa is a very gay pop tune often sung at fado places. As contrast, I guess. – Richard Joseph, Travel Editor of Esquire

Lisbon At Twilight

Barco Negro

The Lonely Beach

Rapsodia Portuguesa

A Small Cafe

Song Of The Sea

April In Portugal 

Fado Obrigado

Villa Villa

Variacoes em re Menor

Ladies Of Lisbon

Una Casa Portuguesa