Portuguese composer and pianist, Antonio Vargas (b 1951) has composed extensively with his young career divided into two parts: jazz music (up to about 1991), and music for film, opera, orchestra and chamber music. These two divisions are based on his life being cast between study at the Rotterdam Conservatoire (until 1990) and teaching in Lisbon from 1991.
He is a composer of distinction, having composed for the Arditti String Quartet, Galliard Ensemble, Royal Scottish Academy Brass, and The Northern Sinfonia amongst others.
Curiously, modern-day harpsichord music may seem rare, but there is a genuine interest in new material. Vargas’s Il ritorno is one such piece. Commissioned in 2002 for the International Music Festival of Mafra, the piece is in 4 movements lasting about 14 minutes.
Its opening movement is a Preludio, showing idiosyncratic devices for harpsichord, such as ornamentation and variation derived from tempo fluctuations and harmonic interest. The second movement, Fantasia ossessiva is a brilliant and fiery display of technical demands with changing metres heightening the energy. Relief comes in the third movement, Interludio, with its contrasting articulations between hands, cross-rhythms and single-line parts. The final movement returns to a fast-paced idea of triplets and use of trills.