Storm, Ricardo (1930–2000)

Ricardo Storm (b. 14 March 1930; d. 26 March 2000), Uruguayan composer. Storm was born in Montevideo and began his musical education while very young. He studied piano under Wilhelm Kolischer and composition with the Spanish composer Enrique Casal Chapí, who was living in Montevideo at that time. Storm's initial works, dating from the early 1950s, already showed the composer's preferred style: vocal pieces in the form of songs, lieder and opera. His compositions for piano include a suite (1949), Fantasía (1950), several fugues (1950–1951), and a Sonata (1963). Introducción y allegro, Storm's first orchestral work, was premiered in 1954 by the OSSODRE (national public broadcast symphony orchestra) under Juan Protasi. His opera El regreso is an intensive work, substantial in scope, based on Aeschylus's Choephoroi, with a libretto written by the composer. It premiered at the SODRE theater on 17 April 1958. The music is in universalist style, sober in its musical language but distinctly Italian in its dramatic vocal treatment. Among Storm's vocal and choral productions is Tres canciones para mezzosoprano y orquesta, on texts by the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, performed by Matilde Siano and the OSSODRE under Antonio Pereira Arias in February 1963. Other works of his include Música para cuerdas, piano y timbales (1959) and a symphony (1989), both premiered by the OSSODRE. He died in Montevideo on March 26, 2000. On August 19 of that year, a concert was staged to pay honor to his memory. It included a performance of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony.

See alsoMusic: Art Music .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Composers of the Americas, vol. 16 (1970), pp. 149-153.

Susana Salgado, Breve historia de la música culta en el Uruguay, 2d ed. (1980); Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana (1993).

Additional Bibliography

Ficher, Miguel. Latin American Classical Composers: A Biographical Dictionary. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996.

Salgado, Susana. The Teatro Solís: 150 Years of Opera, Concert, and Ballet in Montevideo. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003.

                                          Susana Salgado