Troka: Dance Pantomime for Children, for orchestra

Revueltas based this 1938 "dance pantomime for children" on a book by Germán List Arzubide, who, like Revueltas, belonged to the Mexican avant-garde movement Estridentismo ("Stridency"). Indeed, much of this score-much of Revueltas's oeuvre-is loud and raucous, but for a purpose. List Arzubide's children's book Troka the Powerful follows the adventures of a robot, and concerns human domination over nature. Thus, Revueltas alternates tootling, comically mechanistic passages with music of intense lyricism, on which dissonant remarks from the brass and woodwinds frequently intrude. Troka begins and ends with a bumptious fall-down march typical of the composer; the overall effect of this nine-minute piece is of a sort of wind-up Petrushka. Revueltas's dance pantomime never reached the stage, but the score may have been used in the background of radio broadcasts on which List Arzubide read his stories. ~ James Reel, All Music Guide