Friday, September 14, 2018

Hommage à Chopin



Here's another Villa-Lobos recording I missed this spring. Marcel Worms' disc Inspired by Chopin includes Hommage à Chopin, which Villa wrote for the 100th Anniversary of Chopin's death in 1949. I find this a very moving work. Though Villa-Lobos was hardly built in the Chopin mold, the two composers had a lot in common. In André Gide's words, "Chopin paid no attention to symmetry and pendants." Villa-Lobos's piano music has obvious connections to Chopin's works, but probably more important was Chopin's influence in the development of the Guitar Etudes and especially the Preludes, which Villa-Lobos had written earlier in the decade.

This is a very fine performance of this work.


No comments:

Post a Comment