Villa on Vinyl #6: Latin Fiesta

From 1963, Latin American Fiesta, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. 

The headline work here is Bachianas Brasileiras #5, which back in the day wasn't quite the warhorse it's become in the past sixty years. I'm sure the early 60s serious lover of Latin American music was at least as interested in the rest of the repertoire on this album; I know I am today. Lenny includes the Danzón Cubano of his mentor Aaron Copland, but there are also other more authentic pieces here, from Brazilian and Mexican composers.

The most substantial work is Carlos Châvez's Sinfonia India; this is a fine version indeed. His fellow Mexican composer, Silvestre Revueltas, is well represented by the ballet Sensemayá. Two slight Brazilian dances complete the program: the Batuque of Villa's close friend, Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez; and the Brazilian Dance of one of the leading composers of the generation after Villa-Lobos, Mozart Camargo Guàrnieri. What a wonderful mix of music.

Early in 1963, Leonard Bernstein began planning his Young People's Concert: The Latin American Spirit, which was televised on March 8th of that year. As you can see, he wasn't quite sure which works might be on the actual program.

There's BB#5, still the headline piece, with the Revueltas ballet, the Fernândez Batuque and Copland's Danzòn Cubano. The WSS at the end? That would be the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, (which would have fit beautifully on this album if there had been more room). Lenny crosses out the Guarnieri, and considers, but also crosses out, music by Gottschalk and Morton Gould.

Luckily we can watch this wonderful lecture/concert on YouTube; it's a landmark in "music appreciation" - in many ways it transcends that genre. Woke Lenny shows up right away: I love him!

Here's Bernstein's actual script, with his final annotations; like the previous notes, this is from the Library of Congress website.

Bernstein notes that Villa-Lobos had only been dead for three years at the time; this is contemporary music! He then gives an admirably concise and accurate explanation of the title.

As Norman Lebrecht notes in The Life and Death of Classical Music, Leonard Bernstein had a great deal of power at Columbia Records. "I want to be free to record whatever I wish," he said to Masterworks boss Schuyler Chapin. "I don't want anyone to tell me such-and-such cannot be done." Lebrecht notes that Bernstein's records didn't sell well, with a few exceptions, but what we get from Bernstein and Columbia is what Lenny wanted. And with his Latin American Young People's Concert he had the core of his next album all set, and his New York players prepared.

What about this version of the Bachianas Brasileiras #5? The soprano Netania Davrath is, I'm afraid, outclassed by the competition on records, and not just on more recent recordings. Two great singers recorded the work with the composer at the podium: the great Brazilian soprano Bidu Sayão in 1938, and in 1958, Victoria de los Angeles, who gives my favourite performance on records. And the same year that Latin Fiesta was released, 1963, Villa's close friend Leopold Stokowski recorded a memorable performance of BB#5 for RCA Victor with the superb Anna Moffo. But it's not only the soprano that comes up short on the Columbia disc. The cellos sound marvellous, but there's no spark from Bernstein here. It's not a matter just of speed; Stokowski takes an even slower tempo in the Aria, but that lets Moffo's wondrous voice take over. A rare misfire in this repertoire for Lenny, then, which is too bad. But he makes up for it in the other works here, especially the two Mexican pieces. I really enjoyed this album!

Villa on Vinyl #5: Bachianas Brasileiras #3

This LP is from 1977, in the Stereo/Quadrophonic (SQ) sound system that never really caught on commercially, though judging from our LP collection there were plenty of SQ-compatible albums sold in the 70s and 80s. I'm by no means an super-audiophile; I prefer full, warm, lifelike recordings, but can't be bothered with the pursuit of perfect high-fidelity. For me the details of this ultimately dead-end technology are boring, but if you want to learn more, Wikipedia has you covered. I wonder if anyone today has a working SQ decoding system to play these LPs.

Luckily, the technology was fully compatible with ordinary stereo, so we can hear two remarkable musicians and a wonderful orchestra play one of Villa's greatest works, and a second piece that's just plain fun.

Villa-Lobos wrote quite a few works for piano and orchestra. There are five numbered Concertos, which are all of interest, especially the First and Fifth, but all are easily outstripped by two masterworks from Villa's two great unconventional series. The Eleventh Choros, from 1926, is a big work for piano and orchestra; it's one of his best compositions. And the Third Bachianas Brasileiras, written in 1938, is perhaps just as good; it's a sprawling piece with as fine a balance of the Bachian and the Brazilian as any work in the series.

Until fairly recently, Villa-Lobos's orchestral music wasn't often recorded by world-class orchestras and famous conductors. It's so good to have Vladimir Ashkenazy here, conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra. On the other hand, there have always been lots of Villa-Lobos recordings by very fine pianists, especially from Brazil (Nelson Freire, Sonia Rubinsky, Robert Szidon, João Carlos Martins, Guiomar Novaes, among others). Christina Ortiz is in the top tier of that group; this Bahia-born pianist is a perfect interpreter of this music. These two good-looking young musicians - Ortiz was 27 when this was recorded, & Ashkenazy was 40 - are captured in a nice portrait by photographer Clive Barda on the cover of our LP.

Meanwhile, the Momoprecoce, a Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, is a flashy, tuneful celebration of the Brazilian Carnival. It's a version of Villa's Carnaval das crianças brasileiras, written for solo piano in Paris in 1920, adapted for piano and orchestra in 1930 back in Rio de Janeiro. I expect this album turned on a lot of people to Villa-Lobos back in the late 1970s; it's a wonderful album.

Villa on Vinyl #4: Mass of Saint Sebastian

 

Here's an LP from my birth year, 1952. Werner Janssen conducts the Chorus of the University of California at Berkeley in Villa's Mass of Saint Sebastian.

Villa-Lobos wrote his Missa São Sebastião in the period December 1936 to January 1937. He must have been thrilled with this opportunity to have a major choral work recorded for Columbia Masterworks during one of his regular trips to America in the 1950s. And he would have been pleased to work again with conductor Werner Janssen, who had made a major recording of the Choros #10, perhaps Villa's greatest work, in Los Angeles in 1949. The two would finish off their California trilogy with another Capitol album in 1952, which I'll feature Real Soon Now in a future Villa on Vinyl post.

The Mass came from Villa's interest in the choral music of Palestrina; he wrote it after he conducted the first Brazilian performance of the Missa Papae Marcelli in Rio de Janeiro. To appreciate what a wonderful work this is, I would recommend the wonderful 1993 recording by the Corydon Singers on Hyperion (the link is at the end of this post). Alas, the singing by the Berkeley choir on this disc is fine but doesn't really do the work justice.

The album design is by Herb Meyers, whose Monogram Art Studio did a lot of work for Columbia Masterworks in the 1950s. This Stravinsky cover is Meyers' first, from 1948. It was used as a template for many more Columbia LPs in this period.

Here are three of my favourite Meyer covers, all on Columbia Masterworks, all from 1952: the Dancers of Bali, Gershwin by Andre Kostelanetz and Schoenberg's Erwartung.

Here's the Corydon Singers' version of the Missa:

Villa on Vinyl #3: Villa-Lobos Conducts The Violoncello Society

Villa-Lobos composed at the piano, and he was a fine pianist, if not a virtuoso on the level of his close friend Arthur Rubinstein. But there were two instruments that were special to Villa: the guitar and the cello. As a professional musician, he played the cello in the opera and symphony orchestras in Rio de Janeiro, and improvised accompaniments to silent films with other musicians in cinemas. Some of his greatest works are for cello, most notably Bachianas Brasileiras #1, for "an orchestra of cellos", and his most famous work, BB #5 for soprano and eight cellos. As well, perhaps his best concerto is for the cello, his #2 from 1953 (he also wrote a remarkable Fantasia for Cello and Orchestra).

On December 10, 1958, at the Town Hall in New York, Villa-Lobos conducted 32 cellos from the newly-constituted Violoncello Society in a performance of a new work, the Fantasia Concertante for an Orchestra of Violoncellos. Soon afterwards, according to the liner notes on this LP, the same group recorded this album: the Fantasia on Side 1, and on Side 2: Transcriptions of J.S. Bach Preludes & Fugues from "The Well-Tempered Clavier", for cellos. Villa wrote these works in eight parts, but indicated that larger multiples would sound better. Certainly the cellists here come up with a rich sound, playing four to a part. All 32 cellists are named in the liner notes, which is cool, though the only name I recognized was Bernard Greenhouse, a founding member of the Beaux-Arts Trio, and the person who commissioned the work on behalf of the Society. Interestingly, when the Society went to Rio de Janeiro to play the Brazilian première of the work in November 1967, sixteen of their cellists managed the trip!

The Bach transcriptions are wonderful; Villa takes full advantage of the rich sound of the massed cellos to express his love for Bach. Though far from Historically Informed Performance, this is a sound we know well from the Bachianas Brasileiras series, and from the orchestral transcriptions of another close friend, Leopold Stokowski.

The sadly short-lived Everest Records was a leader in recording technology, and made many outstanding albums in the late 1950s and 1960s. This album sounds great, full and warm. Is that because of its 35mm sound, which is "actually this size!", or is it a factor of my own nostalgia and warm feelings for Villa?

There's no photographer credit for the shot on the cover, but I do know two things. You couldn't walk through this room without tripping over a cello. Secondly, Villa-Lobos is not looking healthy here. He had survived eleven years after an operation for bladder cancer, but succumbed to kidney failure on November 17, 1959. This recording, his last as conductor, is a wonderful memorial to our Villa.

Villa on Vinyl #2: Os Choros De Câmara

The second album in our Villa on Vinyl series begins with the Choros #1 for solo guitar, as our first one did. This 1978 LP from Brazil's Kuarup Discos label, which seems to come from a record store in Brazil, includes all of the Choros for chamber ensembles and single instruments.

There's such an interesting mix of instruments and instrumental colours here: Choros #1 for solo guitar; #2 for flute and clarinet (with a second version on the album for solo piano); #3 for clarinet, alto sax, bassoon, trombone, horn and male choir; #4 for three horns and trombone; #5 for solo piano; and #7 for flute, oboe, alto sax, clarinet, violin, cello and tam-tam. The album concludes with the two Choros Bis, two encore pieces for violin and cello.

These are wonderful performances. Over the years I've enjoyed many Villa-Lobos works played by musicians such as bassoonist Noel Devos, saxophonist Paulo Moura, clarinettist José Botelho, pianist Murillo Santos and guitarist Sérgio Assad. When I first came across this album on CD back in the early days of The Villa-Lobos Website (the mid-90s), I was hearing many of these works for the first time. It certainly helped in building an understanding of the strong modernist strain in Villa-Lobos's music.

The cover features a marvellous painting, "Serenata", by Candido Portinari, who was a friend of Villa's and another of the leading lights of Brazilian modernism. The painting is from 1959, the year of Villa's death.

Villa on Vinyl #1, Julian Bream

 

With this post I'm beginning a new series here at The Villa-Lobos Magazine: Villa on Vinyl. I've been building a fairly substantial collection of Villa-Lobos LPs, almost entirely from thrift shops. I'll feature some of my favourites here. Our first LP is special for me: it's the first time I heard the music of Villa-Lobos!

Julian Bream's album Popular Classics for the Spanish Guitar was released in 1964. It includes a number of Villa-Lobos works:

• Choros #1
• Etude in E minor
• Prelude in; E minor

As well, there are works by Torroba, Turina, Albéniz, Falla, and a traditional piece arranged by Llobet.

I expect we bought this around 1965. The Villa-Lobos pieces obviously made a big impression on me, if my whole Villa-Lobos online life is anything to go by! And ever since then, Julian Bream has been one of my favourite guitarists. We'll come across more of his LPs in this series.

This album was recorded in November and December of 1962, in one of my favourite places in the whole world: the Library in Kenwood House in Hampstead, London.

Photo by Thomas Quine, 2017, Creative Commons License