Monday, May 20, 2019

Amazonas from Chicago

An exceptional performance of Amazonas from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Juanjo Mena, from 2013. Thanks to Rodrigo Roderico for posting this.

The ballet Amazonas was written in Rio in 1917, (possibly a re-working of the earlier - now lost - score Myremis) but didn't receive its premiere until 1929 in Paris.  It's a work of real power and focus, one of the young composer's greatest early works. According to Eeero Tarasti, it's "...an almost avant-gardist work in relation to its time, a work comparable to Varèse's Ameriques."

Is this too good to be true, though? There's no mention in the Museu Villa-Lobos's Villa-Lobos: Sua Obra, 2009, of a manuscript score, so we only have the score published in 1929 by Max Eschig. I'm thinking at least some of this might have been written in 1929, around the peak of Villa-Lobos's modernist period. Or some super-charging, at the very least!


Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Bachianas Brasileiras no. 4 from São Paulo

A recent (2019) performance of the orchestral version of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras no. 4 from the São Paulo Symphony (OSESP), conducted by Wagner Polistchuk.

Thanks once again to Rodrigo Roderico for posting this.