Here's a coincidence: in my previous post I talked about Villa-Lobos's O Martírio dos Insetos, written in 1917/1925 for violin and orchestra. Of course I said we really need a good recording of this fascinating work. That's something I've said many times about many Villa-Lobos works over the past 25 years, and there are only a few major works still left unrecorded (in spite of the exaggerated talk about how prolific a composer he was). And now here is an upcoming recording of the work, from Naxos naturally, though not the full violin and orchestra version, but an arrangement for violin and piano by Ricardo Averbach. I'm looking forward to this disc, due for release on December 7, 2018. A nice Christmas present for all the Villa-Lobos fans out there!
Here is a real find by Rodrigo Roderico, who has been posting some great Villa-Lobos performances on YouTube. A Mariposa na Luz is the final movement of O Martírio dos Insetos, a work for violin and orchestra that Villa-Lobos wrote in 1925 (the first two movements) and 1917 (the finale). It's played here by one of the 20th century's greatest instrumentalists, Jascha Heifetz, with Donald Voorhees conducting the Bell Telephone Hour Orchestra. This is from a 1946 radio broadcast on NBC.
The Martyrdom of the Insects is a work that should be much better known. Here is a more recent performance of the entire work. Daniel Guedes is the violinist, with the Miami University Symphony Orchestra, under Ricardo Averbach. We badly need a good recording of this work!
Here's a release I've been waiting for a while: the latest in Marcelo Bratke's series of complete piano music by Heitor Villa-Lobos. This 2-CD set, billed as vol. 4 & 5, will be released on October 19, 2018. Included are all 11 of the albums of Guia Pratico, plus three other works: Petizada, Brinquedo de Roda & Historias da Carochinha. Watch for my review soon, at Music for Several Instruments (and I'll also post it here at The Villa-Lobos Magazine).
The cover photo of Marcel Bratke makes reference to the photo on the back, with the composer at the blackboard. I've misplaced the photo credit, if I ever had it, but I'm busy looking on the web, & will add it here if I find it. Great shot!
Here's a new video from Simone Menezes, in which she compares two modernist works written in 1916/17, one in St. Petersburg and the other in Rio de Janeiro.
This really is a case of musical synchronicity: Prokofiev's First Symphony "Classical", written as an homage to Haydn, has so many similarities to Villa-Lobos's Sinfonietta no. 1 "À memória de Mozart". While the Prokofiev work is one of the staples of the orchestral repertoire, the Villa-Lobos work is almost unknown. If you're in Switzerland later this month, you'll have a chance to hear Simone conduct this work with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne. This concert will be broadcast on Swiss Radio Classic; I'll let you know the date and time.
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.
Today is Robert Indiana's birthday; the great artist, who died earlier this year, was born on September 13, 1928. I tweeted this quote from former Dallas Museum of Art Director Maxwell Anderson:
He was an artist of consequence who gets mistaken for a one-hit wonder.
Indiana's "one-hit" was, of course, his LOVE sculpture, which the artist himself called "the 20th century's most plagiarized work of art." When Indiana died in May 2018 many of us took the opportunity to see what a great body of work he had produced beyond the one work we all knew.
I'm sure everyone knows where I'm going with this! I happened this morning upon this ICA Classics disc which was released in April 2018, a very fine disc with two superb live recordings never before released on CD:
Both the Schumann and Dvorak cello concertos are quite outstanding, but what really interested me was the bonus piece, a live recording of the Aria from Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5, from the Edinburgh Festival on August 23, 1962. Galina Vishnevskaya sings, and Mstislav Rostropovich leads 7 cellos from the London Symphony Orchestra, in a very special performance.
In my Villa-Lobos life, the "one-hit wonder" part is obvious; promoting the "artist of consequence" part is how I spend much of my time every day.
The big musical event of this summer was Leonard Bernstein's Centennial on August 25th, and The Villa-Lobos Magazine got into the act with my earlier post about his 1963 Young People's Concert: "The Latin American Spirit". There's great archival information about this concert, and so much more, at the Library of Congress's Leonard Bernstein Collection Online, including these 12 pages of Bernstein's hand-written notes.
As well, Bernstein compiled this list of Villa-Lobos's percussion instruments:
As far as I know, Bernstein in his entire career didn't program any Villa-Lobos pieces other than Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5, either in concert or in the recording studio. This is a shame; he would have been especially good, I think, conducting Bachianas Brasileiras no. 2, 7 and 8, or Uirapuru, such a big hit for Leopold Stokowski. More importantly, I would have liked to hear him conduct a fully-staged version of Villa-Lobos's 1948 musical Magdalena. No less an authority than Richard Rodgers said that Magdalena was 25 years ahead of its time, and saw its influence, eight years after its run on Broadway, in Leonard Bernstein's score for West Side Story.
On February 21, 1945, the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed an all-Villa-Lobos concert at the Saunders Theatre at Harvard, under the direction of the composer himself. The audience was in for a treat: this was the first performance outside of Brazil of Bachianas Brasileiras no. 7, one of Villa's greatest works, and among the best-loved. I'm not sure why only the last two movements were performed; the entire work was played at the world premiere in Rio de Janeiro the previous March. The next work was an even bigger coup for the BSO and Harvard (take that, Yale!): it was a world premiere, of Choros no. 11, written in Rio de Janeiro in 1925.
After the intermission came the orchestral version of Rudepoema which Villa-Lobos had made in 1932 from the original piano piece, written in the period 1921-26, and dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein. This was the third performance; the first was in Rio in 1942, and the second in Los Angeles the previous November. I don't believe there have been too many performances of this odd work since then.
This is a concert that's high on the list I keep next to the controls of my time machine.
Speaking of which, here's a picture (by an unidentified photographer) from the previous year, of Villa-Lobos in the Green Room at Symphony Hall in Boston.
From a 2017 concert, the Montreal Conservatory Orchestra plays Villa-Lobos's Choros no. 7, one of his great chamber works from his Paris modernist days. Oliver Holt is the conductor
It's great to see this re-release on its way from Naxos, a label which has done such stellar service for Villa-Lobos over the years. This fine recording from Robert Bonfiglio that was originally released on RCA Red Seal back in 1989 will be re-released in a nice new package on September 14, 2018. It comes with a really useful liner-note essay by Bonfiglio, and as usual with historic re-issues from Naxos, it sounds great.
The Harmonica Concerto is one of Villa-Lobos's many late commissioned works. He wrote it for John Sebastian, the celebrated harmonica virtuoso (and father of the now more-famous John Sebastian, leader of The Lovin' Spoonful) in 1955. It's a pleasant work, tuneful as most late Villa-Lobos is. It's first theme is awfully close to Wally Stott's theme music for BBC's radio programme Hancock's Half Hour, but not to worry, since Villa-Lobos will always have another tune up his sleeve. Bonfiglio provides some virtuoso fireworks, especially in the third movement cadenza, but for most of the piece he's called on to provide soulful sounds, and he does, with emotion, charm and style. He has superb accompaniment from Gerard Schwarz and his New York Chamber Symphony (originally the Y Chamber Symphony, once resident at the 92 Street Y, which ran under Schwarz's leadership from 1977 to 2002).
As fine a work as the Harmonica Concerto is, the final two-thirds of the disc is perhaps even more interesting. It's comprised of arrangements (some by Bonfiglio and some anonymous) of Villa-Lobos songs for harmonica and orchestra. Of course there's a harmonica-and-cellos arrangement of the Aria to Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 - how could there not be? You can never go wrong when arranging this evergreen piece as long as you have a suitably melodic instrument, and you don't meddle too much with the 8 cello parts. Schwarz's 8 cellists sound lovely here, as does Bonfiglio. The famous melody really does fit well with a harmonica. Bonfiglio includes pieces that Villa-Lobos cannibalized from his own catalogue when he put together music for his marvellous musical Magdalena in 1948. One of my favourite works here is the Samba classico that Villa-Lobos wrote in 1950 for voice and orchestra. By the way, this work was premiered by Villa-Lobos at the CBC in Montreal when the composer visited in 1958. This is soulful or jaunty light music of very high caliber. How nice to see this CD in the current catalogue once again!
Menuetto Classics has a series called Essential Works, packages that include a variety of older licensed performances. Variety is the keyword with their Villa-Lobos release; it's really an odd mixture, though each track is beautifully played. There's one performance that I'd call essential: the symphonic poem Uirapurú, performed by Leopold Stokowski & the Stadium Symphony Orchestra of New York. And I was so pleased to see the superb late work Fantasia for an Orchestra of Cellos, with the The Violoncello Society, an all-star super-group of all the top New York cellists, led by the composer. This is an easy way to get that work, streamed or on MP3, though I'll still be listening on my old LP!
Here is the lovely 2nd movement, Lento. An orchestra of cellos! Note that this album is now also available at the Naxos Music Library.
From the 13th Annual Festival de Música de Santa Catarina, Sexteto Místico by Heitor Villa-Lobos. Such an interesting work, from 1917, an important year for the young composer.
Here's some exciting news for lovers of Villa-Lobos's piano and guitar music. Alvaro Henrique reports in his blog that the lost piano transcriptions of Villa's Etudes 9-12 by José Viera Brandão have been found. These transcriptions as well as those of the Guitar Preludes are by a close friend and colleague of the composer, and emphasize the influence of two pianists on the great guitar works: Frederic Chopin and Ernesto Nazareth. The Prelude transcriptions have become fairly popular with pianists; I'm hoping the Etudes will soon begin showing up in concert, on YouTube and in recordings.
This is Sonia Rubinsky playing the 2nd Prelude in Brandão's transcription:
This is from volume 7 in Rubinsky's Naxos series of Villa-Lobos Complete Piano Music. In his fine album notes, James Melo notes "In their technical virtuosity Brandão’s transcriptions achieve the stature of true transcendental etudes for the piano."
In 1958 cellist Bernard Greenhouse and composer Heitor Villa-Lobos organized a concert at New York's Town Hall of The Violoncello Society, a newly formed group led by Greenhouse and made up of many of the top cellists of the day. The concert, which was recorded and released on an LP, though unfortunately never re-released on CD*, included a number of Bach Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier. These were adapted by Villa-Lobos in 1941 for "an orchestra of cellos". In his score he asks for a minimum of ten, and in the end Greenhouse rounded up 32 cellists for the recording.
In this new Yarlung Records disc Antonio and Alberto Lysy provide a well-chosen selection of South American music for cello and violin, and a few other instruments. In a tour-de-force of technology and musicianship, and in a tribute to his hero Bernard Greenhouse, cellist Antonio Lysy multi-track recorded between 16 and 28 cellos playing 4 to 7 parts in one of Villa's Bach fugues, and in Pablo Casals' multi-cello piece Les Rois Mages (The Three Kings). Producer Bob Attiyeh provides this explanation in his excellent liner notes:
The effect is quite stunning.
There's much more on this disc. Two popular Villa-Lobos pieces show up, featuring Antonio's cello with two guests: O canto do cisne negro (The Song of the Black Swan) with harpist Marcia Dickstein Vogler; and Assobio a Jato (The Jet Whistle) with Anastasia Petanova on flute. There are a number of works from Argentina featuring Coco Trivosonno on bandoneon. Finally, there's a major work for father and son, with Alberto Lysy on violin: Zoltán Kodály's Duo for Violin and Cello. This is a well-planned, beautifully-played and expertly recorded disc.
Here is a very cool project from back in 2012, by soprano Julianne Daud and chef Ivo Faria da Costa of Vecchio Sogno Ristorante in Belo Horizonte. Chef Faria matched pieces by Villa-Lobos with dishes he created, and served them as Daud and a small group of musicians performed.
The fish appetizer goes with Uirapuru:
The next course with Choros no. 5, "Alma Brasileira":
With pork ribs "à moda sertaneja" (country style), the Toccata movement from Bachianas Brasileiras no. 2, the Little Train from the Caipira:
Finally, for dessert, Villa-Lobos's sweetest music, the Aria from Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5:
This is such a great release, with music we've needed on disc for such a long time. Of course, I'm most interested in the two Villa-Lobos works, both of which from his late period. Late Villa-Lobos is a bit of a hodgepodge; it includes a few less than inspired commissioned works, but also some of his greatest music: the last few String Quartets, the Magnificat Alleluia and Bendita sabedoria, and the operas Yerma and A Menina das Nuvens. The two pieces for wind orchestra are both standouts. The Concerto Grossofor Wind Quartet (flute, oboe, clarinet & bassoon) and Wind Orchestra is from Villa-Lobos's last year, 1959. There are a few recordings available, including a Latin Grammy-winner from Naxos with Jose Serebrier conducting "The President's Own" United States Marine Band. The 1958 Fantasia em Tres Movimentos (en Forma de Choros), a nostalgic final look back at a lifetime of music in the Choros form, has only a single recording, a world premiere available from the University of Pennsylvania Music Department. Both of the newly recorded pieces are beautifully played by the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra under conductors Clark Rundell and Mark Heron, and well presented by the Chandos producer engineers. 2017 was the Villa-Lobos Symphonies Year, thanks to the completion of the Naxos series from OSESP under Isaac Karabtchevsky. Even though it's only March, I'm quite sure 2018 will be the Villa-Lobos Wind Orchestra Year, based on this release.
On Twitter I referred to these two works as Villa-Lobos's NAFTA music, after Marcelo Rodolfo of the Museu Villa-Lobos tweeted that the Concerto Grosso was written in Mexico, and the Fantasia in Canada:
As you can see from the scores, both works were written for The American Wind Symphony in Pittsburgh, and both were dedicated to Mindinha.
(Thanks for these, Marcelo!)
The other works on this disc are really interesting. The two pieces by Joaquin Rodrigo are about what I expected, colourful music with Iberian touches. With the title Chapultepec, I expected something more folkloric from Carlos Chavez's piece, but it's more about the municipal band in the town square playing military marches and Italian opera tunes than anything approaching the revolutionary modernism we connect with Chavez. The entire disc is full of colour and engaging tunes; it's completely delightful.
Here's another arrangement of a Villa-Lobos piece for wind ensemble, after yesterday's BB#5 Aria from DePauw University Band. It's from The University of Houston Wind Ensemble's 1999 album Enigma Variations, conducted by Eddie Green. The arrangement is by Merlin Patterson.
The 4th Bachianas Brasileiras went through a number of transformations by Villa-Lobos himself. It was originally written for piano in three chunks: the Dança (Miudinho), which became the finale, in 1930; the Ária (Cantiga), the 3rd movement, in 1935; and the Prelúdio (Introdução) and Coral (Canto do Sertão), the 1st two movements, in 1941.
Villa then orchestrated the piece in 1942.
Finally, he re-worked the first movement to become the opening Seed of God segment of his Broadway musical Magdalena. There's a recording of the Magdalena Suite on an amazing LP from 1974 called Andre Kostelanetz Plays Villa-Lobos. Unfortunately, this isn't available on Spotify, but you can listen to a 30 second clip at the Internet Archive. By the way, this disc is available on CD & MP3 from Klassic Haus Restorations.
This is quite lovely: John Krance's arrangement for wind ensemble of the Aria of Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5. It's played beautifully by the DePauw University Band, conducted by Craig Paré. From their 2017 album Everything Beautiful.
This is exciting: a new Chandos disc of music for wind orchestra from Latin America, due to be released on April 23, 2018, which includes two important late works by Villa-Lobos.
Villa-Lobos had a real knack for wind band music, and the different sonorities make these works more interesting than some of the more routine commissioned works from the 1950s. I have high hopes for the new Chandos disc. Once I get a chance to hear it, I'll report on it here, and post a full review at Music for Several Instruments.
New at the IMSLP Petrucci Music Library, scans of the autograph scores of two songs by Alberto Nepomuceno arranged for voice and orchestra by Villa-Lobos: Oração ao diabo and Trovas. These are in the public domain, except in the EU.
In February 2018 the place to be for Villa-Lobos fans is Sao Paulo. Later this month the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) will feature six concerts of Villa-Lobos in their Viva Villa! Festival. Isaac Karabtchevsky leads the orchestra in such important works as Choros #10 and Uirapuru. They'll also play assorted movements from the Symphonies, coinciding with the release of the 6 CD box set of the Complete Symphonies from Naxos. The excellent OSESP Choir, led by Valentina Peleggi will perform the choral version of Bachianas Brasileiras #9 along with Villa-Lobos's arrangements of Bach preludes and fugues. Also featured are guitarist Fabio Zanon and pianist Marcelo Bratke.
Except for the Little Train movement, the 2nd Bachianas Brasileiras isn't as well known as some of the other in the series. Here's a fine recent (July 2017) performance by Roberto Tibiriçá and the Orquestra Sinfônica da UFRJ.
I don't often get to listen to Villa-Lobos music I've never heard before. This is Aeanan, a vocalise, from the new CD by the Norwegian boys' choir Sølvguttene. I can't find any reference to this work in the Villa-Lobos repertoire; can anyone help? I love the bird calls!
One thing we know: Villa-Lobos knows his way around a vocalise!
Update: No mention of this piece by name in Villa-Lobos Sua Obra, 2009. But there are 12
Vocalises in one of Villa's choral collections; I expect it's one of those.
Update #2: Thanks to Tiago Arruda in São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil, who got the answer to this from Marcelo Rodolfo at the Museu Villa-Lobos. This is the choral version of the tune Pintor De Cannahy from the first volume of Guia Prático (1932).
Villa-Lobos used the same tune in building one of the pieces from his Cirandas. Here's Sonia Rubinsky playing this piece, from the first volume of her Complete Piano Works:
Violí Stroh (ca. 1900), Compagnie française du gramophone. Museo de la Música de Balcelona.
In a review of a 1930 concert conducted by Villa-Lobos, Mario de Andrade mentions Villa's innovative use of a violinophone in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 1. Bach calls for a violino piccolo, which is tuned a minor third or fourth higher than a regular violin. This is hardly Historically Informed Practice by today's standards, but Andrade was impressed: "The effect was very curious, especially the timbre in the second movement, marrying admirably the timbre of the violinophone with that of certain wind instruments."
The Villa-Lobos Symphonies series from Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) under Isaac Karabtchevsky comes to a triumphant conclusion with this disc of the composer's first two symphonies. Though Villa-Lobos was a little bit of a late bloomer - his earliest works aren't especially accomplished by the standards set by Mendelssohn or Schubert - there's an interesting situation keeping this release from being anti-climactic. The 2nd Symphony, ostensibly written in the late teens of the 20th century, had to wait until 1944 for its premiere, and the composer seems to have used more than a bit of his best juju in polishing up this piece for its performance. It thus seems to be far in advance of the 1st symphony, and more importantly, the 3rd and even the 4th, as good as that work is. Though it's true that the 2nd Symphony is based on the principles of composition espoused by Vincent d'Indy and there are many French and Russian-sounding bits, one keeps hearing passages that sound like nothing as much as the Bachianas Brasilieras. And that's all to the good, I think.
By the way, there are a few other works from this period where something similar happened. Villa-Lobos wrote "1917" on the score of the marvellous orchestral work Uirapuru, but it wasn't premiered until 1935. Like the 2nd Symphony, it has a suspiciously nationalistic, Bachianas Brasileiras sound, which isn't surprising considering that the composer conducted the premiere in front of President Vargas. And the score of the Sexteto Mistico (one of my favourite chamber works), written in 1917, was lost. Villa-Lobos re-wrote it from memory, but obviously slipped in music in the modernist style he had mastered in Paris in the mid-1920s.
With his 1st Symphony Villa-Lobos was still learning to write music for orchestra, but it's still a more than creditable effort. It has a very fine performance here, partly because of the Sao Paulo musicians, who are very much in a groove with their conductor Isaac Karabtchevsky; and partly because of the carefully revised score which fixes many mistakes and excrescences, and in which Karabtchevsky himself played a major role. This performance makes an even better case for the symphony than the very good CPO recording from Stuttgart conducted by Carl St. Clair.
There are two last things to praise. The Naxos design team has done a great job with this whole series. They've broken out of the bland Naxos cover tradition with striking black and white photographs. This last disc is one of the best; it features Beach at Nightfall, Rio de Janeiro, 1940, by Thomaz Farkas, the great Hungarian photographer who moved to Brazil as a child. Secondly, Fábio Zanon, who is currently Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, provides another absolutely first-class essay for the liner notes, with strong analysis and new insights. Put together, the Naxos Symphonies notes represent a major contribution to Villa-Lobos scholarship. This last disc in the set will be released on November 10, 2017
Here is the cover of the sixth and final disc in the splendid Naxos set of complete Villa-Lobos Symphonies from OSESP under Isaac Karabtchevsky, due to be released on November 10, 2017. I'll post a review as soon as I get a chance to listen. Once again Naxos has come up with a head-turning design for the cover; design hasn't always been their strong suit over the years, but all six discs in this series are just beautiful. It's based on a stunning photograph: "Beach at Nightfall, Rio de Janeiro," 1940, by Thomaz Farkas.
Villa-Lobos: Suite populaire bresilienne; Scriabin: Prelude pour la main gauche; Ponce: Sonata #3; Takemitsu: Equinox; Sor: Fantaisie Elégiaque
InParis est une solitude peuplée Judicael Perroy has put together a fascinating group of pieces for the classical guitar, played with style and precision. It's a program of moods, with a focus on the beautifully melancholic, that nostalgic enjoyment one takes in the sad sounds of a lost past. The Portuguese, and especially the Brazilians, have the termsaudade, which Manuel de Melo has called "a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy." Villa-Lobos'sSuite populaire Bresilienneis layered with these feelings. Already when the composer put pen to paper he was remembering an earlier time of street musicians from his father's generation and his childhood. When he added the final movement, the Chorinho, in 1923, there was a new modernist, Parisian layer to the music and an additional layer of sadness and regret. Perroy plays Villa's 1948 revision of this music; the composer was always polishing his early music. I've been listening to this beautiful music for many years, and especially since I began the Villa-Lobos Website nearly 25 years ago, so listening to this fresh sounding version evokes all of the dozens of versions - Kraft, Zanon, Barrueco, Turibio Santos, Leisner, Assad - that I've come to love. The rest of the album continues on a pensive note, with a fine miniature based on a Scriabin work for piano left hand. Works by Ponce, Takemitsu and Sor round out this well-planned, nicely presented and beautifully played album. It's due to be released on September 1st, 2017.
Back in 1993 I was involved in a CD recording project with Brazilian pianist Ricardo Peres. We recorded Dance of the White Indian* as a fund-raising project for Red Deer Public Library, where I was the Director. I remember sitting down with Ricardo one morning, and he played me this piece, which I had never heard before; I barely knew a thing about Villa-Lobos.
That was the beginning of my Villa-Lobos life on the web, 25 years of it, and counting.
In the last quarter century I've learned a great deal about this music; it's been a time of increasing interest in Villa-Lobos and a major rise in his reputation. His piano music as much as any other segment of his vast output has been the beneficiary of this. Now comes a really excellent new disc from Canadian pianist Andree-Ann Deschenes which contains The Dance of the White Indian and the rest of the Ciclo Brasileiro, one of Villa's greatest works for piano. Here's a live performance of the piece:
You'll note that this performance (which matches the recording on the CD fairly closely) is a much more controlled one than Ricardo's hell-bent for leather version. We'll always have performances on the whole continuum between Villa's warmer, more passionate, more Brazilian/folkloric side and his cooler, more cerebral, more Parisian/modernist one. The Ciclo Brasileiro is a kind of Brazilian travelogue (Villa enjoyed these), written in 1930s, when he was busy writing his Bachianas Brasileiras and the folklore-inspired Guia Pratico. I feel, perhaps counter-intuitively, that Deschenes' cool clarity puts across the regional Brazilian folkloric flavour better than some versions that swing (or even rock) a bit more. In any case, this is very fine piano playing.
The tango, of course, has its own built in hot/cool dynamic, which the Argentine composer Juan Jose Castro, a younger contemporary of Villa-Lobos, uses to excellent effect in his Tangos para Piano, written in 1941. With references to popular songs - La Cumparsita in the first tango Evocación, for example, and 9 de Julio in the last, Nostálgico - Castro brings the rhythms of the dance halls to Argentina's art music, which Villa-Lobos had been doing for some time in Brazil. I admire Deschenes' evocative playing here even more than in the Villa-Lobos, especially the bandoneón-sounding chords at the end of the last tango.
I love the idea of an encore on a CD; they should be as common on disc as in concert. Deschenes plays a fun piece by the Cuban composer Jose Maria Vitier, with able support from percussionist Calixto Oviedo. A fine end to an excellent disc.
Radames Gnattali (1906-1988) is such an interesting composer. Nearly 20 years younger than Villa-Lobos, his career in music has much in common with his older compatriot. Both were interested in music at a very early age; both played guitar in popular music ensembles and in silent movie houses; and a melding of popular and classical music became a keynote of their music. However, it's not Villa-Lobos but George Gershwin who Gnattali most reminds me of. Gershwin was only seven years older than the Brazilian, though Gnattali lived a full fifty years longer than the unfortunate George. American jazz was the third x in Gnattali's y along with erudite and Brazilian popular music, while Villa-Lobos had no time for that particular brand of music. These light and tuneful Concertinos for guitar and orchestra include samba and choros rhythms and bits of popular songs, but as the fine liner notes by Emiliano Giannetti explain, this music
... reveals the impact of jazz in the way it includes pentatonic scales, a particular layering of sound, and marked alternation of orchestra and soloist in the form of short, serried passages in dialogue.
The balance between solo instrument and orchestra is always problematic when it comes to the guitar. Villa-Lobos thinned out his usually full-bodied orchestra for his concerto, which ended up as the Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra. Even then guitarists struggle to be heard; there's an oft-told story about Segovia's wife urging Villa-Lobos on the podium during rehearsals to quieten down the players. Gnattali also scores transparently and keeps things tuneful and easy. Concertino is the right designation for this kind of music. Of course it's easier to deal with balance issues in the recording studio, and the sound engineers have found the perfect place for Marco Salcito's guitar with respect to the orchestra.
It's remarkable that these works aren't better known; this disc includes a premiere on CD (#1) and a world recording premiere (#2). Salcito acquits himself well, and with the strong support of conductor Marcello Bufalini and the Sinfonica Abruzzese provides us with a convincing Exhibit A in deciding whether Gnattali's four works deserve a place with the other masterworks for guitar and orchestra in the classic Spanish style, by Villa-Lobos, Ponce, Rodrigo and Castelnuevo-Tedesco. I'll need to ponder this question for a while!
This disc is due to be released on July 21, 2017. This review has also been posted at Music for Several Instruments.
Along with relatively popular pieces by Ernesto Nazareth and Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian pianist Grace Alves has done a real service in providing some rarities for piano from Marlos Nobre, Oriano de Almeida and especially Chiquinha Gonzaga, a great composer and social activist from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While the Gonzaga pieces Gaúcho, Suspiro and Atraente might seem slight, they have real dignity and are very much pioneering efforts in the development of Brazilian popular music. Oriano de Almeida is from two generations after Villa-Lobos, but his music has the same Paris/Rio, modernism/folklore dynamic as Villa, though his style relies more on American jazz. This appealing music sounds more like Gershwin than his compatriot Villa-Lobos. His Valsa de Paris is really delightful. Marlos Nobre, Brazil's most distinguished living composer, provides two serious but accessible pieces that evoke the life and folklore of the North-East part of Brazil, as Villa-Lobos has often done. Alves plays with grace and power throughout, though without the final level of virtuosity and rhythmic control of Sonia Rubinsky or Nelson Freire. This is a fine first effort; I look forward to future recordings.
Here's a very fine performance of the Concerto for guitar and small orchestra, 1951. Matthew Marshall plays the guitar, and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Sir William Southgate. Wellington Town Hall, 1993.
Villa-Lobos wrote twelve symphonies, though only eleven of the scores survive, and he wrote them from early in his career (1916) to very late (1957, two years before his death). People have been warning us for a long time not to value Villa-Lobos's symphonies too highly. I know this; I've been one of them. Don't expect too much, was the message, his best works are for the guitar and piano, and in the Choros and the Bachianas Brasileiras series. Now that we're well into the Naxos Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) series, led by Isaac Karabtchevsky, I'm beginning to think this particular piece of conventional wisdom might be wrong. These three symphonies sound familiar, sure, because they sound like Villa-Lobos. But even though I've heard all three a number of times, in the very good CPO series from Carl St. Clair and the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart made around the turn of the last century, the music on the new disc sounds fresh and new and really quite amazing. This series is forcing all of us to sit up and take notice of a whole big chunk of Villa-Lobos's legendarily large output.
In his really excellent liner notes the guitarist and musicologist Fabio Zanon talks about how Villa's mature symphonies suffered because they were different from people's expectations and because of editorial problems with the scores. Though I hear the odd echo of the Choros from Villa's heyday in Paris in the 1920s, and plenty of call-outs to the Bachianas Brasileiras series of the 1930s and early 40s, the 8th, 9th and 11th Symphonies share something of a reboot feeling for the composer. Here he finally turns his back, more or less, on modernism, while doing the same, more or less, with the folkloric music that made his worldwide reputation. There's a neo-classical (not neo-baroque) sound that goes along with early classical symphonic structures. Zanon sees and hears both Haydn and Mozart in this music, with Beethoven and Schubert lurking around the edges. Having stripped down his orchestral music to the essentials, we're now more aware than ever of how Villa-Lobos has constructed the music. To be sure this is still music written for large orchestras, but there's no Brazilian percussion component, no prepared pianos or violinophones, and no over-the-top Romantic gestures. The first movement of the 9th Symphony is instructive. Villa zips out three themes in quick succession, gives them a quick run-through in his contrapuntal-light machine, and then, when you expect a fair bit of noodling, he winds things up abruptly, with a typical Villa-Lobos flourish. All done in less than four and a half minutes. I must say that I like the concise Villa-Lobos; it makes a nice change from the often over-blown padding of more than a few of his works. This is vivid, direct, lively music without empty gesticulation. With the varnish of score errors and outdated preconceptions removed, these three symphonies emerge as masterpieces.
Henry Prunières is an important figure in the arts in Paris between the wars. He created La Revue musicale in 1920, running it until 1939. This periodical documented Villa-Lobos's exploits in Paris in the 1920s. Here is a letter Villa-Lobos wrote to Prunières in 1929, from the French National Library's Gallica portal.
I noticed the remastered disc of Vera Dulova's 1976 Melodiya recording of the Villa-Lobos Harp Concerto up on the Naxos Music Library today. Here's the original LP:
The Harp Concerto should be much better known than it is. It was written in 1953 on commission from harpist Nicanor Zabaleta.
This is a really interesting interview that Villa-Lobos gave at the Empire State Music Festival in Harriman State Park (Bear Mountain) in New York, on July 12, 1959. This was the composer's last concert before his death. Though he couldn't have been in the best of health, he sounds his usual self. His wife Mindinha chimes in at the end.
Unfortunately my Portuguese is less than basic, but this Google translation of the YouTube poster's summary give the gist of what Villa said:
Villa-Lobos comments on the issues of the time, welcomes the Brazilian people, declares his love for the homeland - Rio de Janeiro - and talks to the journalist while the orchestra rehearses the presentation of more. In the audio that is now part of the MEC FM radio collection, Villa-Lobos demystifies the creation process. "This business of coming inspiration does not exist in me. I was born inspired already. Either I do a good thing, or I do crap. But this business of me looking for inspiration, letting hair grow to have inspiration, drink, it does not exist in me. I write when I need to.
The Argentine choreographer Dani Pannullo and his dance company present Uirapuru, based on Villa-Lobos' great early orchestral masterpiece. The music is played by JORCAM, conducted by Jordi Frances-Sanjuan. This is from 2011.
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.
Text and translation are from the liner notes to the Corydon Singers/Matthew Best Villa Lobos sacred music CD on the Hyperion label (CDA6638, 1992/93.) Used with permission of Hyperion Records.
