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.
