Fly the Friendly Skies

Here's another photo from the Online Archive of California.

Courtesy of Los Angeles Philharmonic Archives

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/c81z42cr/?order=1

Title:

 Photograph of Heitor Villa-Lobos with his wife

Creator/Contributor:

 Otto Rothschild

Date:

1957 July 26

Contributing Institution:

 Los Angeles Philharmonic Archives

Villa in Vietnam

Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/ark:/28722/bk0000m475f/?order=1

Title:

 Hanoi Conservatory, Hanoi

Vietnamese music traditionally absorbed influences from China, India, Cambodia, and the ancient southern kingdom of Champa. More recently, Vietnamese music has been influenced by the West. A portrait of Brazilian composer Heitor Villa Lobos hangs on the wall.

Creator/Contributor:

 Clifford, Geoffrey, Photographer

Balaban, John, 1943-, Collaborator

Date:

1987

Contributing Institution:

 UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

This is from the Online Archive of California.

Throw-back Thursday

It's #TBT, Throw-back Thursday, so I'm exploring some of the dustier and more obscure corners of the Internet for interesting old Villa-Lobos items. The Biblioteca Virtual de Miguel de Cervantes is a cool site with some great links to other archives. Most importantly it contains some fascinating documents from the estate of the pianist Arthur Rubinstein. Here's a 1974 picture of Rubinstein with Villa's widow Mindinha:

and a 1976 New Year's greeting to the pianist from Mindinha and her recently established Museu Villa-Lobos:

This is from a June 1, 1973 Brazilian article about goings-on at the Museu Villa-Lobos. It talks about a new French (Grand Prix du Disque-winning) LP with Les Soloists de Paris and soprano Anna-Maria Bondi, and the Gold Medal that the Museu Villa-Lobos had just given to Arthur Rubinstein. There's also news about the Festival Villa-Lobos. The whole article is here.

By the way, that 1973 French LP has been released on CD. I know this CD, but had no idea it went back that far!

Villa-Lobos the precursor

In Kafka and His Precursors, Jorge Luis Borges traces the lineage of The Castle back in time to Zeno, Han Yu, Kierkegaard, Léon Bloy and Lord Dunsany. I thought of this essay during my review of Aleyson Scopel's new CD of Almeida Prado's Cartas Celestes. That work was groundbreaking in Brazil in 1974 (and 1982-83 when the work was continued). The obvious precursors are Almeida Prado's teachers, and in terms of the piano the most important would be Oliver Messiaen and György Kurtág.

Here is a very short movement from Kurtág's 8 Piano Pieces, written in 1960:



This is the kind of music that set the stage for Almeida Prado's work. Another Kurtág work that's relevant is his Játékok (Games), which has the same large scope and multi-year plan. He began this project in 1973.

But it was back in Brazil that Almeida Prado wrote Cartas Celestes, and in spite of a significant backlash after Villa's death in 1959, he was still the Elephant in the Room. There are two obvious links to Villa-Lobos. The first is a 1939 work I mention in my review: As três Marias. This has the same celestial/cosmological focus, with a modernist style that looks backwards to the 1920s and ahead to the 1970s. It's significant that one of the proponents of this work was Villa's close friend Edgard Varese.



Going back to the first flowering of Villa-Lobos's modernist period is the greatest piano piece written in Brazil (and perhaps in America?), Rudepoema. Here is Sonia Rubinsky playing that seminal piece, from the same album:




Another work I mention in my review as a precursor is Marlos Nobre's Concerto Breve, from 1969. Nobre feels that the "abundant and violent clusters" in this work had a significant influence on Almeida Prado, and the other Brazilian composers of his generation. It's significant, in Nobre's telling, that he played this work for the younger composer just before he left for his studies in Paris and Darmstadt.


Two things to look forward to: the release of Aleyson Scopel's Grand Piano CD on April 8, 2016, and further releases in the same series. Once the project is complete we'll have a better idea of the place of Cartas Celestes in the music of Brazil.

Villa-Lobos CD reviews

In the past week I've reviewed a couple of fairly recent Villa-Lobos CDs:

This superb CD of Brazilian songs by Cristiane Roncaglio from 2014 includes some great modernist songs from the 1920s, plus lots of interesting popular and art songs from Brazil.

And an excellent CD of Bassoon Concertos by Matthias Racz, including the Ciranda das sete notas.

Katrina Krimsky's new Villa-Lobos/Barber CD

I'm looking forward to this CD, coming April 8, 2016. The Samuel Barber Piano Sonata, written in 1949 is such a great work, and a great test of a pianist's abilities and musicianship. The two sets of Villa-Lobos Prole do Bebe bring their own challenges of virtuosity and style. I'm so pleased to see the second set included, since it's much less popular than the first. I'll review the disc as soon as it's available.

[Not sure if this is the same 2007 CD recorded in November 2007 and released by Charmed Quarks.]

Great Villa-Lobos works you don't know: Nonetto

Everyone knows Villa-Lobos, right? Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5, or at least its Aria, sung by every soprano, and played in arrangements for everything from accordians to xylophones. The guitar music played by every single guitarist in the YouTube world, from Julian Bream to your 8-year-old nephew to the handsome new guys like Milos and Mickael Viegas. The Little Train movement from BB2, which is so well-known, though not as famous as it would have been if Walt Disney had put his animators on it during Fantasia. I'm still mad about that lost opportunity.

Then there's the next layer down: nearly all the rest of the Bachianas, which are very popular on disc and in performance. The string quartets are all awesome; it's so great that quartets around the world are following the Cuarteto Latinoamericano's lead and programming them. Choros no. 10 at The Last Night of the Proms a few years ago knocked everybody's socks off. The piano music has a big discography, though I'd love to see more in performance, from Prole do Bebe encores up to the scary Rudepoema (though only for pianists with very high self-esteem). Even the Symphonies are becoming appreciated, thanks to a great new Naxos series of recordings from Sao Paulo.

But what about unknown Villa-Lobos in the layers below? Are there great works hidden down there where only Villa-Lobos fanatics with lighted coal-miners' helmets go? Yes! I'll be your guide in a series of posts exposing the pre-Cambrian layer of great Villa-Lobos music that everyone should know, but only the Villa-Lobos illuminati appreciate.

Exhibit A: the Nonetto. This work was begun in Rio in 1923, and finished in Paris in 1924. It's subtitled "Impressão rapida de todo o Brasil" - "Rapid Impression of Brazil", and was designed to show off Villa's awesomeness as a complete package: exoticism plus leading-edge modernism. Villa-Lobos was a master of self-promotion; to the Paris musical press he described the Nonetto as "Nova forma de composicao que exprime o ambiente sonoro e os ritmos mais originais do Brasil." (A new form of composition which expresses the noise environment and the most original rhythms of Brazil). This sentence packs some audacious claims: "A new form" puts him firmly in the modernist camp; "the noise environment" implies a radical naturalism; and "the most original rhythms of Brazil" sets in motion a lifelong claim where Villa-Lobos himself is the true representative of the country of Brazil, not just musically, but somehow the soul of the country itself. Here is a very self-assured young composer!

Does Villa-Lobos deliver? If he does in any piece, it's in the Nonetto. This is a large-scale work pushing out from a chamber-music frame. There are nine players in theory: flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone (actually saxophones; the player alternates between an alto and baritone saxes), bassoon, celesta, harp, piano and percussion (which actually requires 3 people). Plus a mixed choir. It fills a large stage! Here's what it looks like on the page:

On the front page of the score, the Max Eschig editors invite interested parties to come to their offices at 48 rue du Rome in Paris to check out "les instruments de percussion et de batterie qui ne sont pas d'un usage courant dans les orchestres." It's all part of the marketing of the exotic in the arts, which was big in Paris, from Japanese painting and African sculpure to African percussion and the sounds of the Balinese gamelan. Villa-Lobos jumped head-first into the mix, beginning with his tall tales of travels in the jungle, encounters with Indians and strange animals and plants (man-eating plants!). The Nonetto, which was premiered at a famous concert in May 1924, was an important milestone in Villa's acceptance as a composer.

Here is the roll call of the batterie:

But this is a 'rapid impression' of all Brazil: there's the urban life of the choroes here as well as the jungle. Villa had brought this sound to his music in such works as the Suite populaire bresilienne of 1912, the First String Quartet of 1915, and the Choros no.1 of 1920, dedicated to Ernesto Nazareth. It would play a key role in the whole series of Choros, the bulk of which were written in the 1920s. Indeed, you could call the Nonetto an honorary Choros.

In some ways Nonetto is a dress rehearsal for Choros no. 10 of 1926, which adds a full orchestra (and an extra harp) to the chorus, piano, celesta, harp, and huge percussion complement of the earlier work. But whereas Villa-Lobos brings actual Indian motifs to bear in Choros 10, in Nonetto, there are African and Portuguese elements but no aboriginal ones. "Zango! Zizambango! Dangozangorangotango!" sings the Nonetto choir, in a made-up African language, to the beat of the Brazilian Batuque dance that originated in Cape Verde.

So what does it all sound like? Listen to this important 1954 Capitol release featuring Roger Wagner's Chorale & Concert Arts Ensemble. In a review in The Musical Quarterly, critic Richard Goldman said "The Nonetto is sub-titled 'Quick Impression of All Brazil,' a country apparently settled by Stravinsky and the random survivors of an orchestral shipwreck some time after 1920." The conductor Ricardo Rocha said "The Nonetto I call ‘a musical Guernica, but with humor…"

What do you think?

Mickael Viegas CD released

The new Villa-Lobos 2 CD set by Mickael Viegas is now available on Spotify. It's also now streaming on Naxos Music Library.

Read more about this fascinating project at my post of a few weeks ago.

Villa-Lobos and Waldemar Henrique songs

Here's a new CD of Brazilian art songs from baritone Renato Mismetti and pianist Maximiliano de Brito, from Pleorama. It includes some of Villa-Lobos's best songs, and a good selection of songs by Waldemar Henrique, from the generation after Villa-Lobos. There's more information, and clips, at the Pleorama site. Love the album design!

Here's one of my favourite Villa-Lobos songs, Estrella é lua nova:

Villa-Lobos and Marian Anderson, pt. 2

On March 14, 1945, Villa-Lobos was the guest of honour at a reception at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. The guest list was impressive; here are the names David Appleby lists in his Villa-Lobos biography:

Marian Anderson, Bidu Sayao, Walter Damrosch, Arthur Rodzinski, Leopold Stokowski, Benny Goodman, Aaron Copland, Carleton Sprague Smith, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Fiorello La Guardia, Sigmund Romberg, George Szell, Joseph Szigetti, Arturo Toscanini, Ezio Pinza, Claudio Arrau, Morton Gould, Yehudi Menuhin, Eugene Ormandy, Jose Iturbi, Deems Taylor, Nelson Rockefeller, Olin Downes and Oscar Thompson.

Here's a picture of the composer with Aaron Copland and the Brazilian Consul Oscar Correia taken that day:

And here, along with Mindinha, is a friend Villa-Lobos made in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1930s, soprano Marian Anderson. I've seen this picture on the web before, but didn't know when it was taken. Judging from Villa's outfit, we have the answer.

Back in 2009 I posted about Villa's relationship with Anderson. The two had become close back in Brazil and they kept up a correspondence, and would run into each other over the years as international musicians tend to do. I wish that Anderson had recorded some Villa-Lobos songs, especially the Poema da Itabira, which was dedicated to her.

#BlackHistoryMonth

Philip Glass and Villa-Lobos

 

The 1993 album Águas da Amazônia brought together the Brazilian instrumental group Uakti and composer Philip Glass. The music was originally written by Glass for the Grupo Corpo ballet group of Belo Horizonte. In the first piece on the album, entitled Tiquiê River, Glass borrows from, or pays homage to, Villa-Lobos. That seems at first a natural connection, since Villa-Lobos has always been connected with the Amazon. However, the piece in question is Villa's desert-themed 2nd movement from Bachianas Brasileiras no. 4, Coral (Canto do sertão). The sertão is the dry region of North-Eastern Brazil.

By the way, I see that Uakti and Philip Glass will be together on stage for the first time, performing Águas da Amazônia in May 2016 at the 92nd Street Y in New York. More information here.

This isn't the only connection between Glass and Villa-Lobos. Glass links his 2nd Symphony, written at about the same time, to the polytonal music of the 1930s and 40s, specifically referring, in his liner notes to the Nonesuch recording (pictured below), to Honegger, Milhaud and Villa-Lobos.

Here's the 1st movement of that very interesting symphony, played by the Bournemouth Symphony under Marin Alsop, from a 2004 Naxos album:

The Prospect of a Future Guitar

The Prospect of a Future Guitar from Mickael Viegas on Vimeo.

This is a fascinating project from guitarist Michael Viegas, which involves performances and arrangements (by Viegas) of Villa's complete music for guitar. These are based on his theories of the limitations of the instrument and the addition of both melodic and harmonic material which from a close study of the scores Viegas feels might have been the composer's true intentions. The guitarist overdubs additional guitar parts, and he also mentions 'orchestrations' though there are no details of these included in the video. As well, Viegas brings up the possibility of a future re-design of the guitar (hence the name of the album: The Prospect of a Future Guitar) which might make live performance of the the kind of music he envisions a possibility.

The album recording was completed in November of 2014, and Viegas was busy with post-production during 2015. The album is not due to be released until later this winter. The only online source I've found so far is at Amazon.fr, which shows a release date of February 19, 2016. Here are the front and back covers of the two-CD set:

I look forward to a discussion of what this approach might mean for this amazing but perhaps over-familiar music. The law of diminishing returns might be in operation here, when nearly every guitarist records at least the Preludes and first Choros, and often the complete music for guitar. It's sometimes hard to find a marketing niche, if not a special way of playing the music. From the very musical and well-played clips included in the video the album, and its underlying radical rethinking of Villa's music, promises at least to be a shot in the arm for this well-worn music. 

Villa-Lobos by Fraga

Caricaturists love Villa-Lobos; here's a great one by the Brazilian artist Fraga, from his excellent blog, Fraga Caricaturas.

#ThrowBackThursday, from August 2010.

Villa-Lobos Symphonies Project

I missed this when it came out: the March-April 2013 issue of Musical Opinion includes an article by conductor Isaac Karabtchevsky about the upcoming Naxos series of Villa-Lobos Symphonies recordings with OSESP. Here is the original plan laid out in the article:

There's been some slippage on the timelines, but it's nice to see some pieces on this list that are overdue for modern, easily accessible recordings. Specifically, I'm excited about Odisséia de uma raça and the Fantasia Concertante for 32 cellos. 

Here's where we are so far in the project:

2012:

Symphonies no. 6 & 7

2013:

Symphonies no. 3 & 4

2014:

Symphony no. 10

2015:

Symphony no. 12

Uirapuru

Mandu-Carará

What's next? Maestro Karabtchevsky will be performing Symphonies no. 9 & 11 in two OSEP concerts in February, so it's a good bet those two pieces will show up on the next CD. Check it out if you're in Sao Paulo next month!

Letters to Posterity

The guitar music of Villa-Lobos is popular. Of 541 Villa-Lobos CDs available at ArkivMusic, 156 include music for guitar, and new ones show up pretty regularly. It’s relatively inexpensive music to record, with a single artist who brings his or her instrument, and not impossibly difficult engineering requirements.  And this understates the broader popularity of this music in the Classical Guitar (CG) community. Back in 2009 I analyzed ten years of Villa-Lobos concerts, and found that music for guitar near the top in popularity (139 performances for Bachianas Brasileiras #5, against 30 for Choros #1, 29 for the Preludes, 25 for the Suite Populaire Bresilienne, 20 for the Etudes, and 49 for ‘Works for Guitar’). I mentioned then that a search of YouTube would show how ubiquitous these works were. Here are the current YouTube stats:

Villa-Lobos Preludes:  about 216,000 results
Villa-Lobos Etudes: about 124,000 results
Villa-Lobos Choros 1: about 87,900 results

This is core CG repertoire, partly because of early championship by artists like Segovia, Abel Carlevaro and Julian Bream, but also because the music is so accessible, with elements of popular and erudite music intertwined. In the end, though, it’s because this music is so damn good.

How, then, does a guitarist position a new Villa-Lobos CD, and get the music heard? In last year’s excellent recital CD, Kazu Suwa chose to include three Villa-Lobos pieces. I quote from my review:

He’s picked three Villa-Lobos pieces with great character, and more importantly he plays each of them in a character-ful way. And he puts them in the penultimate spot, as they deserve, with just a sad, beautiful little piece by Mompou as a coda.

This seems an excellent way to introduce more Villa-Lobos into such a crowded marketplace. That CD, by the way, ended up on my Top 10 Albums list for 2015.

Now we come to Thomas Lyng Poulsen’s Letters to Posterity, which includes pretty much the full solo music for guitar on two CDs. This includes music of a very broad range, from salon pieces and dances Villa remembered from his days playing in chorões bands, to the more-than-pedological Etudes of the late 1920s, and on to the great Preludes of the 1940s. I wouldn’t expect a single guitarist to excel in all three areas, but Poulsen provides credible versions of pretty much all of the music. His technique is strong, and the music is clearly communicated. He’s strongest, I think, in the Preludes, which are all five really excellent. This is maybe a bit of a surprise considering Poulsen’s teaching experience; I would have expected the Etudes to be the sweet spot for a guitar teacher. Choros no. 1 didn’t quite swing the way I like it to (I prefer the Brazilians Fabio Zanon, Manuel Barrueco and Turibio Santos), and parts of the Suite Populaire Bresilienne seemed over-thought, over-serious.


But Thomas certainly did his homework. It was fun following his process from his original plan to the publication of this recording in his blog My Villa-Lobos Journey. He grappled with just this issue many times. Here he is, from August 2014, working on the Schottisch (Choro):

A word that has filled my thoughts this past week is rubato. Another one is pulse. It appears to me, that the balancing of these two mighty musical weapons is the key, to succesfully solving the pieces I have worked on so far, on this blog. Finding that balance means - I believe - searching territory bordering absurdity. Absurdly rigid and on-time, and absurdly fluid to the point of incomprehensible. When you’ve been there, I guess it’s all a matter of relaxing, and just playing... But as always, easier said, than done.

This is music which takes an interesting route between simplicity and complexity. When the issues are technical - and even Segovia had his troubles with Villa’s music - solving the technical issues won’t ‘solve’ the music by itself. When the music seems simple an artist can bring out subtleties that aren’t immediately apparent, but were clearly put there by the composer. Leonard B. Meyer called this Grammatical Simplicity and Relational Richness, in a key paper about (of course) Mozart. I value Thomas’s journey as much as his destination; both demonstrate a significant subset of the Relational Richness of the music of Villa-Lobos.

Roger Wagner conducts Villa-Lobos

I was pleased to see this album on Spotify. Wagner's LP of the Nonetto and the Quatuor, featuring the Roger Wagner Chorale and The Concert Arts Ensemble, was released in 1957. The Nonetto is a great modernist work that's still waiting for a modern, easily available recording, but this performance, and the other excellent one from the 1950s, by The Brazilian Festival Orchestra and Schola Cantorum, conducted by Hugh Ross, will certainly do in the meantime. Villa-Lobos gave this big thumb's up to Wagner for his recording:

"Roger Wagner deserves all my admiration for his dedicated work...a notable achievement in technique and sound as well as perfect interpretation."

Both recordings from the 1950s were released on a CD in 2008, which is still available, and very highly recommended.

Villa's greatest work?

I've always thought that Choros #10 is Villa-Lobos's greatest work. Written in 1926, it's been called Villa's Beethoven 9th Symphony. I remember a special performance of this work conducted by David Robertson, in the Last Night of the Proms concert of 2009. I saw it live via satellite in a Red Deer AB theatre.



My favourite version, though, is the version by John Neschling and OSESP (the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra & Chorus).


It's the climax of the great Choros series on 3 CDs from BIS, and also available in a box set along with the equally-great BIS series of Bachianas Brasileiras. You cannot do without these discs!

New York Skyline

Villa-Lobos's New York Sky Line Melody is based on the concept of millimetrization. I quote myself, from my original post on Symphony no. 6 (which used the same technique in 1944) at the old Villa-Lobos Website (now at the new Villa-Lobos Website in Indiana):

This technique, invented by Joseph Schillinger (1895-1943), and first used by him in the late 1920s, takes pictures of real-world things - skylines or mountains, for example - and turns them into musical phrases.  It's analogous to digitization, I guess, if I'm not mixing digits, analogues and/or metaphors.  Prof. Tarasti explains:

"...one needs a photograph of a mountain, landscape or a hill, whose contours are transferred onto graph paper.  One then writes vertically in the margin, working upward through 85 tones in chromatic order (i.e., of the tempered scale) from C to C." - Tarasti (1995), p. 376

Apparently George Gershwin used Schillinger's system when he was writing Porgy & Bess.  Villa-Lobos used the system in New York Skyline Melody (1939), before he moved to a bigger canvas, both in his input (the mountains around Rio de Janeiro), and output (a full-scale symphony).  He also used it in on a picture of Nicholas Slonimsky's family - a story told in Slonimsky's 1945 book Music of Latin America.

The picture above is taken from Carlos Kater's article "Villa-Lobos e a 'Melodia das montanhas': Contribuição à revisão crítica da pedagogia musical brasileira", Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 1984), pp. 102-105.  I discussed NY Skyline in this post at The Villa-Lobos Magazine.

RIP Gilberto Mendes

Photo by Luiza Sigulem

Yesterday we lost a great Brazilian composer, perhaps the greatest since Villa-Lobos. Gilberto Ambrosio Garcia Mendes was born in Santos on October 13, 1922, and died January 1, 2016, at age 93. Like every Brazilian musician he was in Villa's shadow, but Mendes, who studied with Boulez and Stockhausen, saw him as a precursor to new music. Mendes was able to build on Villa's legacy rather than spending his energy raging about or rebelling against the reactionary Villa-Lobos.

What matters in Villa-Lobos, says Mendes, "is not the Brazilian character that his music can have, rather it is the modernity of such a personal musical language that he built, at times, with some elements of our folklore and popular urban music, at other times with elements of Bach’s music, as it could have been built with any other elements and would have always been the same language, his language". This is from the excellent liner notes to the 2011 OSESP album Gilberto Mendes 90 Anos. By the way, you can download the entire album + notes at the OSESP site.

Though his music fit smack in the middle of the avant garde in Brazil, he was never doctrinaire or too serious about anything. One of my favourite pieces of his is Ulysses in Copacabana Surfing with James Joyce and Dorothy Lamour. As ironic as it might be intended, it's full of lush, romantic exoticism, and is a lovely piece in itself.




Back in 2009 I posted here at The Villa-Lobos Magazine on Mendes's analysis of Villa-Lobos the Modernist. Mendes was a perceptive fellow!

One of my favourite Mendes CDs is from Filip Rathé and the Spectra Ensemble. Unfortunately, it's not on Spotify or the Naxos Music Library. Here's a link to more information, with 30 second clips from each track.

Merry Christmas from The Villa-Lobos Magazine

Here's a Christmas staple for the Villa-Lobos lover: the beautiful Praesepe, a choral work written in 1952 for alto soloist and mixed chorus, #21 in the collection Musica Sacra, vol. 1.

Villa-Lobos set the words of Padre Jose de Anchieta, a Portuguese missionary to Brazil, written in 1563.

Sed iuvat interia tanti primordia partus,
nascentisque urbem volvere mente Dei. 

But it is profitable to turn over in our minds the hidden origins
of this great birth, the town in which God was born.

New Villa-Lobos CD

Except for the Naxos Symphonies series, some guitar CDs and some reissues, there haven't been too many new Villa-Lobos releases this year. Here's a major release, from cellist Anne Gastinel, which includes the 1st and 5th Bachianas Brasileiras, along with arrangements for cellos of works by Piazzolla.

 

I'm working on a review right now. I'll post it on my new review site - Music for Several Instruments - Real Soon Now.

Madona

One of the best things about the new Naxos series of Villa-Lobos Symphonies was the inclusion of the cantata Mandu-Çarará. This was close to the top of my wish-list for a new recording. Now that it's out there, the top spot goes to Madona, the symphonic poem written for Serge Koussevitsky in 1945. Since Madona was included in the new edition of Villa-Lobos scores from the Brazilian Academy of Music, it's only a matter of time before it shows up on disc.

In the meantime, here is a very fine live performance from July 2015, with the Orquestra Sinfônica da UFRJ is conducted by Roberto Duarte.



Thanks to пока from Brazilian Concert Music for the head's-up on this!

Presença de Villa-Lobos na Música Brasileira para Violoncelo e Piano

Cellist Hugo Pilger and pianist Lucia Barrenechea are featured in this lavish documentary directed by  Liloye Boubli. Pilger plays Villa's own cello. More information is here.

A new blog

Here is a new blog about the world of classical music outside of Villa-Lobos (no, really, there is one!) It's called Music for Several Instruments, and it starts with about 140 reviews I posted around the web in the past 5 or 6 years. Go take a look. I'll wait here.

A fine new guitar CD from London

The true art of putting together a CD program is something that even some very good performers don’t always pull off. This is especially important for classical guitarists, whose selections too often lack variety of mood or rhythm. Putting a group of musical items together to build a series of emotional or technical arcs, where one piece speaks to or builds on another earlier in the program: these are things that will always enhance a well-played CG disc. The fine London-based guitarist Kazu Suwa knows that Villa’s guitar pieces are character pieces: the Preludes, the movements of the Suite Populaire Bresilienne, and even the Etudes. He’s picked three Villa-Lobos pieces with great character, and more importantly he plays each of them in a character-ful way. And he puts them in the penultimate spot, as they deserve, with just a sad, beautiful little piece by Mompou as a coda.

There are many felicities in this new CD before that wistful ending.  The Gran Vals of Tarrega with its famous embedded Nokia ring-tone (some day soon we’ll have to explain that bit of trivia to younger people who don’t remember flip-phones or Nokia) is a highlight. I loved the two small Milongas of Abel Fleury, and was impressed with the graceful swing Suwa brings to them. The great Choro da Saudade by Barrios Mangore is a more substantial piece, and Suwa plays it with seriousness and majesty, while he draws out the nostalgic sorrow underlying the music. Another standout is the 6th Fantasia of Fernando Sor, subtitled ‘Les Adieux’, and again Suwa has its measure.

The sound of the disc is excellent, and the production values are very high. There’s an excellent, insightful 11-page essay about the music written by Robert Matthew-Walker. This disc is highly recommended.

The disc is available from Kazu Suwa's website here, at Amazon.com, or at many other online stores listed on his website.

Uirapuru

The excellent new Naxos recording of Symphony #12 with OSESP and Isaac Karabtchevsky includes the cantata Mandu-Carará and the ballet Uirapuru, one of Villa-Lobos's finest early works for orchestra. This piece is based upon an Indian legend about a legendary bird of the rain-forest called the Uirapuru. The Uirapuru is an actual bird, which sounds like this:




Here's what Villa-Lobos makes of the song:

Villa-Lobos for two guitars, from a 1958 LP

 

You can listen to this 1958 LP from guitarists Graciela Pomponio and Jorge Martinez Zarate, which includes three Villa-Lobos pieces from Petizada and Cirandas, at the excellent Gallica website.

New Guitar Manuscripts CD

 

Naxos will release the third and final volume in Andrea Bissoli's series entitled "Villa-Lobos: The Guitar Manuscripts," in July 2015. Two premiere recordings are included, both arranged by Bissoli: a version of the early Tarantela, and 14 songs from the Guia pratico, played by Bissoli and the Ensemble Cirandinha. The main work on the CD, though, is the 1928 manuscript version of the Douze Etudes.

 

Finally, Naxos has included a fairly rarely-recorded orchestral work: O papagaio do moleque, a story about kite-flying which is performed by the Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra. Villa-Lobos loved flying kites as much as playing billiards and smoking big cigars. I look forward to hearing this!

Primitive Canticles

In this photo from the Library of Congress, dancer Martha Graham is shown in a pose from Two Primitive Canticles, a ballet from 1932 with music by Villa-Lobos. The ballet was divided into two sections: "Ave" and "Salve", but I don't know what the music was.

New York World's Fair Music Festival

 

Walter Burle Marx conducts the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in this long program full of Brazilian goodies, part of the World's Fair Music Festival. This program is from the excellent NYPO Digital Archives.

Nonetto from Greece

An excellent version of one of my favourite Villa-Lobos pieces, the Nonetto. Vladimiros Symeonidis conducts the Contra Tempo Chamber Orchestra and the Mixed Choir of Thessaloniki. Thanks to Rodrigo Roderico for the heads-up on this.

Through The Night from Brazil

One of my favourite programs on BBC Radio 3 is Through The Night, which features music in concert from around the world. Heard during the small hours of the night in the UK, it's prime-time listening here on the West Coast of North America. The latest episode includes some great music from Sao Paulo.

An OSESP concert from 2014, conducted by Isaac Karabtchevsky, begins the program. Two of the works were later recorded (in the studio) for the latest Naxos release in their Villa-Lobos Symphonies series: the ballet Uirapuru and the cantata Mandu-Carara. The great cellist Antonio Meneses is featured in another important work, the Fantasy for cello and orchestra.

It's also great to hear Maestro Karabtchevsky conduct the Heliopolis Symphony in some more Villa-Lobos. More on that worthwhile social and musical endeavor here.

Also, stick around for some guitar music from my favourite Villa-Lobos guitarist, Norbert Kraft. This program will be available for the next 30 days.

New Symphonies disc: with Mandu-Çarará!

 

The latest CD in the excellent Naxos Symphonies series comes out next month. Symphony no. 12 is another big piece, written in New York and finished on the composer's 70th birthday, March 5, 1957. I'm looking forward to hearing this; Isaac Karabtchevsky and OSESP are making a big splash with this series (numbers 3, 4, 6, 7, and 10 are out so far).

But for me the most exciting work on the new disc is Mandu-Çarará, a cantata written in 1940 (a period when Villa-Lobos was working on his Bachianas Brasileiras series). This is the first commercially recorded version of this piece. I've heard recordings of live broadcasts, and it's a really impressive piece. It'll be a chance to hear Naomi Munakata's Sao Paulo Symphony Choir & Children's Choir at their best as well.

I'm also looking forward to hearing what Karabtchevsky and OSESP make of Uirapuru, an early masterpiece written under the influence of Stravinsky, which is well-represented on disc (including the ground-breaking Leopold Stokowski version from 1959).

The release date is March 30, 2015 in the UK, April 14 in the US.

Symphony no. 10 video from Naxos Records

From Naxos Records, highlights from the latest release in the complete Villa-Lobos Symphonies series. Isaac Karabtchevsky conducts Leonardo Neiva, baritone, Saulo Javan, bass, and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) and Choir.

A little help, please...

Here's another picture from the Brazilian National Archive:

 

The picture was published on February 2,  1952 in Correio da Manhã, but there's no indication of who these gentlemen are. I'm pretty sure that's Walter Burle Marx on the left (and tolerably sure about the guy with the cigar!). Can anyone help with the identities of the other two?

15-two, 15-four, and a pair is six

After 20 years in the Villa-Lobos on the web business, it's pretty rare for me to see a new picture of Villa-Lobos on the web. Here's one I haven't seen before; it was posted earlier today by the Brazilian National Archive on Twitter, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Villa's first public concert.

Há 100 anos Villa-Lobos realizava o 1o. recital com obras suas. Do acervo do @ArquivoBrasil o compositor em 1957. pic.twitter.com/9XVlzj9800

— Arquivo Nacional (@ArquivoBrasil) January 29, 2015

This is Villa's normal chaos as he composed. Always a cup of coffee; always a cigar. Is that a crib board on the table?

Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 for Choir and Guitar

 

Here is something special: a new arrangement for choir (SATB) and guitar by Bob Chilcott of that most arranged of pieces, the Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5, originally written for soprano and an orchestra of cellos. I love the textures.

For the next month you can listen to the BBC Singers and guitarist Sean Shibe in this concert, featured today on the programme Radio 3 Live in Concert. BB#5 begins at 43:00.

Rio 450 and Villa-Lobos

On March 1st, 2015, the city of Rio de Janeiro celebrates the 450th anniversary of its founding in 1565.

One of the key celebrations will be a special series of concerts with the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira (which celebrates its own 75th anniversary in August). Roberto Minczuk will conduct all 9 Bachianas Brasileiras in two concerts, on March 7th (#1, 5 with soprano Rosana Lamosa, 8 and 4) and March 8th (#2, 3 with pianist Jean-Louis Steuerman, 6 and 9). Those concerts are also conveniently close to Villa's March 5th birthday.

Other Rio 450 concerts this year feature such composers as Tom Jobim, Marcos Portugal, Henrique Oswald and Francisco Mignone.

Marcela Rahal sings Magnificat Aleluia

Mezzo Soprano Marcela Rahal sings the magnificent Magnificat Aleluia, which Villa-Lobos wrote in 1958 (the year before his death), with the Orquestra de Câmara da USP and Coral da ECA.

Verde Velhice

Here's something you don't come across every day: an orchestral work by Villa-Lobos that hasn't been performed since the 1920s.



Verde Velhice is short piece written in 1922, called 'Divertimento' in the unpublished score (held by the Museu Villa-Lobos). This performance at the 2014 Festival Villa-Lobos is by the Orquestra Sinfônica da UFRJ conducted by Marcelo Ramos. This music was last heard when the composer presented it in Sao Paulo in 1926.

Here is more information on the piece, from Villa-Lobos: Sua Obra, 1.0 (2009):

VERDE VELHICE (1922, SP)
Adagio
Muito Lento
2fl, 2ob, 2cl(Bb), cl baixo, 2fg, 4cor, 2trp, 3trb, tuba, tímp, tam-tam, hp, pf e cordas
AUTÓGRAFO (MVL): 34 x 27 - 10 p.
DURAÇÃO: 8‟
PUBLICAÇÕES: não publicada
COPYRIGHT: © 1922 by HVL
EXECUÇÕES: 1a 1926, São Paulo. Heitor Villa-Lobos, regente
OBSERVAÇÕES: • Com a indicação: "Divertimento"; • dedicada ao Conselheiro Antonio Prado.

5th Piano Concerto

The 5th Piano Concerto is still not programmed very often. Here's an exceptional recent performance, though, from pianist Fabio Martino and OSESP under Celso Antunes (September 2014). This may not be profound music, but it sounds completely Villa-Lobosian to me. OSESP is nailing obscure Villa-Lobos lately, with this plus their new Symphony series on Naxos. The newly edited scores are probably a factor, since so many Villa-Lobos scores have been plagued with many many inaccuracies. But I'm completely convinced by Martino, OSESP and Antunes (plus Karabtchevsky in the Symphonies); this music is in their blood.

Camerata Atlântica play Bachianas Brasileiras no. 9

Usually when string players are arranged on a stage in a semi-circle to play Villa-Lobos, it's for Bachianas Brasileiras #1 for 8 cellos, or #5 for cellos and soprano. Here are string players of the Camerata Atlântica playing the 9th Bachianas, two to a part with one double bass, and they sound great.

The latest CD in the Villa-Lobos Symphony series: no. 10

The new CD in the Naxos Villa-Lobos Symphonies series with OSESP under Isaac Karabtchevsky is finally here, and it should be a doozy.

The 10th Symphony is the biggest in the series, complete with some good bits as well as some of Villa's less fortunate tendencies. This will be a test of Karabtchevsky's vision and his control over the very good musicians of the Sao Paulo Symphony and Choir, and the two important male singers. We'll also see the results of the new edition of the work, prepared by an editorial team which includes Isaac Karabtchevsky, published by Criadores do Brasil. Maybe this clean-up of the notoriously sloppy scores will result in a tighter, more lucid whole that might bring to mind something more like Beethoven's Ninth or one of Mahler's Symphonies, and less like a pastiche from a Hollywood B-movie. Pre-order now at Amazon.

New Guitar concerto CD

When Villa-Lobos added a cadenza to the Fantasia Concerto he wrote for Segovia, he changed the name to Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra. The orchestral writing is 'thinly scored' to allow an un-amplified guitar to be heard, but Mme. Segovia still insisted that she couldn't hear her husband during the rehearsals for the premiere. Villa-Lobos conducted, going from p to pp to ppp, I'm sure with his mouth firmly closed all the time.

This picture, from the Museu Villa-Lobos, is included in the excellent liner notes to the equally excellent new Stein-Erik Olsen CD Havana Rio Moscow, with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Terje Mikkelsen. Incidentally, the album just showed up today at The Naxos Music Library.

O Piano e a Criança

 

I came across this in Google Books: a 2011 publication by Irmãos Vitale. The pieces included, all written for children, are:

• Brinquedo de roda
• Petizada
• Primeira suíte infantil
• Segunda suíte infantil
• Histórias da carochinha
• Cirandinhas  

There's more information on the publisher's site.

Rio Paris: Brazilian songs with a French connection

I've finally had a chance to listen to the Erato CD Rio Paris, a project by guitarist Liat Cohen, with the involvement of three special singers: Natalie Dessay, Agnes Jaoui and Helena Noguerra. Seven of the 17 tracks are by Villa-Lobos, but I also really enjoyed Cohen's choice by more recent composers, beginning with my favourite Tom Jobim song, Waters of March.

The centre-piece of the disc is the Aria of Bachianas Brasileiras #5, presented in Villa-Lobos's own arrangement for guitar and voice, and performed by Liat Cohen and Natalie Dessay. Two little-known early songs by Villa-Lobos with Cohen and Dessay are also included: Les Meres, op.45, and L'oiseau besse d'une fleche, op. 10 (most VL pieces with opus numbers are from the beginning of his career: these are from 1913 and 1914).

There are plenty of other delights included.  I especially appreciated three spare arrangements for guitar and voice by Rafi Kadishson:

• Agua e vinho by Egberto Gismondi, sung by Helena Noguerra
• the Baden Powell/Vinicius de Moraes Samba em preludio, sung by Agnes Jaoui and Helena Noguerra
• the Jobim standard Desafinado sung by Helena Noguerra

The liner notes by Villa-Lobos scholar Rémi Jacobs show the serious side of the project, but you can tell from Liat Cohen's notes, the pictures included in the booklet, and the music itself, everyone involved seems to have had a lot of fun.

Irina Kulikova plays Guitar Music by Russian Composers

 

Guitarist Irina Kulikova's excellent new CD of guitar music by Russian composers includes a piece by Konstantin Vassiliev entitled Mogiana in memoriam Heitor Villa-Lobos.  Named for the Mogiana district of Sao Paulo State, this piece is Villa-Lobosian, but it also has a strong Tom Jobim vibe. The entire disc is highly recommended, for excellent playing as well as the usual strong production and engineering provided by Bonnie and Norbert Kraft. Like so many great Naxos guitar discs, this was recorded at St. John Chrysostom Church in Newmarket Ontario.

Villa-Lobos A New Way

Villa-Lobos A New Way is a project begun by pianist, composer & arranger Alberto Conde and poet, playwright, novelist & musicologist JR Bustamante. The musicians in Conde's version of Choros #10 are:

• Alberto Conde, piano 
• Carmen Durán, soprano 
• Nirankar Khalsa, percussion 
• Kin Garcia, bass 
• Miguel Cabana, drums

Petizada for Symphonic Band

Petizada is a piano suite written in 1912, based on traditional children's songs. It has six movements:

• A mão direita tem uma roseira (The right hand holds a rosebush)
• Assim ninava mamã (Mummy’s Lullaby)
• A pobrezinha sertaneja (The Poor Girl from the Hinterlands)
• Vestidinho branco (Little White Dress)
• Saci
• A História da caipirinha (The Story of the Little Peasant Girl)

Here is the suite in an adaptation for symphonic band by João Victor Bota, played by the Festival Orchestra of the Encerramento do VIII Curso de Férias, Coreto Paulista 2014.

An unpublished Villa-Lobos letter

From the Brazilian site "Glorias: Documentos Raros" comes this punning letter from Villa-Lobos to his friend and pupil "Didi", from 1956.

 

Is it possible?

Di, in place of Do.

Do, in place of Di.

H. Villa-Lobos

 

[from Google Translate:]

Didi,
For those who are willing to follow difficult but glorious work like that you learn and practice at your house but again we can say, since this work is have the purest and most beautiful of all philosophies. But never be repeated too often, as I do now, citing this small piece of the Proverbs of Solomon: "Guard your heart more than all things, for it come the fruits of life."
08.01.46, Pará