Villa-Lobos composed at the piano, and he was a fine pianist, if not a virtuoso on the level of his close friend Arthur Rubinstein. But there were two instruments that were special to Villa: the guitar and the cello. As a professional musician, he played the cello in the opera and symphony orchestras in Rio de Janeiro, and improvised accompaniments to silent films with other musicians in cinemas. Some of his greatest works are for cello, most notably Bachianas Brasileiras #1, for "an orchestra of cellos", and his most famous work, BB #5 for soprano and eight cellos. As well, perhaps his best concerto is for the cello, his #2 from 1953 (he also wrote a remarkable Fantasia for Cello and Orchestra).
On December 10, 1958, at the Town Hall in New York, Villa-Lobos conducted 32 cellos from the newly-constituted Violoncello Society in a performance of a new work, the Fantasia Concertante for an Orchestra of Violoncellos. Soon afterwards, according to the liner notes on this LP, the same group recorded this album: the Fantasia on Side 1, and on Side 2: Transcriptions of J.S. Bach Preludes & Fugues from "The Well-Tempered Clavier", for cellos. Villa wrote these works in eight parts, but indicated that larger multiples would sound better. Certainly the cellists here come up with a rich sound, playing four to a part. All 32 cellists are named in the liner notes, which is cool, though the only name I recognized was Bernard Greenhouse, a founding member of the Beaux-Arts Trio, and the person who commissioned the work on behalf of the Society. Interestingly, when the Society went to Rio de Janeiro to play the Brazilian première of the work in November 1967, sixteen of their cellists managed the trip!
The Bach transcriptions are wonderful; Villa takes full advantage of the rich sound of the massed cellos to express his love for Bach. Though far from Historically Informed Performance, this is a sound we know well from the Bachianas Brasileiras series, and from the orchestral transcriptions of another close friend, Leopold Stokowski.
The sadly short-lived Everest Records was a leader in recording technology, and made many outstanding albums in the late 1950s and 1960s. This album sounds great, full and warm. Is that because of its 35mm sound, which is "actually this size!", or is it a factor of my own nostalgia and warm feelings for Villa?
There's no photographer credit for the shot on the cover, but I do know two things. You couldn't walk through this room without tripping over a cello. Secondly, Villa-Lobos is not looking healthy here. He had survived eleven years after an operation for bladder cancer, but succumbed to kidney failure on November 17, 1959. This recording, his last as conductor, is a wonderful memorial to our Villa.
