Erosion, Origin of the Amazon River

 Here's another LP from Boston Public Library's vinyl LP collection, newly archived at Archive.org.

In the 1950s the Louisville Symphony commissioned orchestral works from composers in the Americas; one of the first was Villa-Lobos's Erosion, Origin of the Amazon River, from 1950. 

Though during this period Villa-Lobos sometimes tossed off commissioned work rather hastily, this work is powerful, and full of incident. According to Prof. Tarasti, this was one of his own works that the composer was most proud of. There's a more recent recording, from 1991, with Roberto Duarte conducting the Slovak Radio Symphony on Marco Polo. It's more polished, and Duarte is certainly a more accomplished Villa-Lobos conductor, though the Louisville and Bratislava orchestras both seem to have a real connection with this music.

I can also highly recommend the other work on this Louisville LP: Norman Dello Joio's St Joan Symphony is wonderful. It's just one more American symphony that seems to have slipped through the cracks.

Listen up!

Mass of Saint Sebastian from Berkeley

The Mass of Saint Sebastian is one of Villa-Lobos's greatest choral works. It was written in December of 1936 and January 1937. In the 1930s the composer was in the middle of his Bachianas Brasileiras series, so it is no surprise to hear his typical combination of erudite European music (in this case Renaissance choral music, especially Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli) and folkloric Brazilian themes (here, Amerindian chants). Saint Sebastian is, of course, the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro, but I couldn't hear anything here of Villa's own personal patron saint, Johann Sebastian Bach. Villa-Lobos's work was closer to Bach's time than Palestrina's work (written in 1562) was to Bach's. This is, like so much of Villa's music, Eclectic with a capital E.

I haven't been able to track down the date of this Columbia Masterworks album recorded by the Chorus of the University of California Berkeley, conducted by Werner Janssen. It was played on The Voice of America in May of 1952, and reviewed by Henry Cowell in the April 1953 issue of The Musical Quarterly, so I think we can safely date it in the early 1950s.

 

I was thrilled to see this album in the Boston Public Library's archive of their vinyl LP collection, newly digitized and available at The Internet Archive. This has never been reissued on CD, and I've never seen it at eBay. It's a noisy copy, but Janssen's personal connection with Villa-Lobos provides some real authenticity; the two were friends from Villa's first visit to Los Angeles in 1944. I'll be posting more Villa-Lobos albums from this valuable resource in the future.