Villa-Lobos: Legends & Facts

A new article in Bravo! by Paulo Nadal presents Lendas e Fatos (Legends and Facts) about Villa-Lobos. I learned lots about Villa-Lobos from this; even in Google's Translation. Some fun facts:

• Villa was involved in a tribute to the famous Brazilian aviator Santos Dumont in 1903. This was during his two-year stint with the choroes group Cavaquinho de Ouro, led by Quincas Laranjeira.
• Villa's first gig as a conductor was in 1908, at the Theatro Santa Celina in Paranaguá PR. During this period (and this is where I might be missing something in the translation), Villa was on the run from the (choros-persecuting?) police.
• Villa-Lobos learned about the music and culture of the Amazonian Indians from the files of anthropologist Edgar Roquette-Pinto and his brother Raul Bormann, who was part of the famous Cândido Rondon Expedition. Rondon was part of the famous River of Doubt trip with Teddy Roosevelt.

The amazing picture above is by Marcos Garupi.

Siberian Virtuosi at the Concurso Nacional Villa-Lobos

The Concurso Nacional Villa-Lobos started in 1979, under the patronage of Mindinha, and has continued on and off since then. The ninth competition begins in Vitória ES on November 12, 2009, with a concert by the Russian Chamber Orchestra "Siberian Virtuosi", that features Bachianas Brasileiras #9.

The Competition has categories for Piano, Voice, & Guitar. [PDF on slideshow.com - free registration required]

More about John Neschling's Música Mundana

This interview by John Neschling by João Luiz Sampaio, following the recent publication of Neschling's book Música Mundana, includes some fascinating insights into the classical music world in Brazil and around the world.  Neschling mentions in the interview that he'll be going to Paris to accept the Diapason d'Or for his Complete Villa-Lobos Choros CDs, and that he would like someday to follow up this recording (with his former orchestra, the Osesp) with a complete series of Choros with l'Orchestre National de France. 

Homenaje a Villa-Lobos in Mexico

It's hard to keep track of the many major Villa-Lobos projects taking place this week around the world. Here's one from Mexico: Homenaje a Villa-Lobos at the Casa do Brasil, which takes place from November 13-20.

Sonia Rubinsky wins Latin Grammy

At last night's Latin Grammy awards ceremony, Sonia Rubinsky won a well-deserved award for Best Classical Recording for the 8th and last volume of her Complete Villa-Lobos Piano Music recordings for Naxos.

Here were the other nominated recordings:

Bach: Cello Suites
Andrés Díaz; Alan Bise, producer [Azica Records]

Cavaleiro Neukomm Criador da Música de Câmara no Brasil
Ricardo Kanji & Rosana Lanzelotte; Anna Carolina Gomes, producer [Biscoito Fino]

Concierto De Aniversario
Ricardo Morales & The Pacifica Quartett; Luis Enrique Juliá, producer [ProArte Musical]

John Neschling's Música Mundana

The Brazilian conductor John Neschling's new book Música Mundana is sure to make a stir when it's released next week. His dismissal from the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo (Osesp) in January was highly controversial - I blogged about this story here and here. It will be interesting to see the response to this release.

Thanks once again to Carlos at the Audições Brasileiras blog for this information.

Le Week-end Villa-Lobos

"Le Week-end Villa-Lobos" is project of Radio France: three concerts in mid-December 2009 which feature the music of Villa-Lobos.

Le Week-end begins on Friday, Dec. 12, with a concert of the Orchestre National de France. Featured works include the first suite of the Descobrimento do Brasil and the second Cello Concerto with the great Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses.

The second concert, on Saturday, Dec. 13, again features Meneses, this time with another stand-out Brazilian instrumentalist: pianist Cristina Ortiz. Finally, on Sunday, Dec. 14, the mini-festival ends with a concert by the Percussions de l'Orchestre National de France.

Villa-Lobos had a special feeling for the city of Paris. He lived there for long periods in the 1920s and the 1950s. He did some of his best conducting, and certainly his best recording, in the Radio France studios. I'm hoping that Radio France Musique eventually broadcasts all three of these concerts. If they do, I'll post the information here, and I'll be listening on my great Radio France iPhone app.

Latin American Cultural Week '09 in NYC

The 2009 version of NYC's Latin American Cultural Week includes two important all Villa-Lobos concerts. On November 8th, soprano Stela Brandao and pianist Max Lifchitz will perform the complete cycle of Modinhas & Canções. Then, on Nov. 10th, the Heitor Villa-Lobos Celebration II event will include some rarely performed chamber works:

• Sextuor mystique (Sexteto mistico)
• Quatuor symbolique (Quarteto simbolico)
• Suite for Voice and Violin
• Poêma da criança e sua mamâ

Performers continue to programme the tried-and-true works, but 2009, the Ano Villa-Lobos, has brought lots of more adventurous choices. The Quatuor symbolique, for example, is one of Villa's greatest chamber works, from his most creative modernist period. It's one thing to put together the odd combination of instruments - harp, celesta, flute, and saxophone - but probably another to add a good group of female voices. But it's all most worthwhile in the end. Perhaps after the significant new concert activity in 2009 (more than 100 concerts are listed in the Villa-Lobos Concerts database for November 2009 alone) we'll see some of Villa's unknown works show up more often in live performance and in good modern recordings.

Simpósio Internacional Heitor Villa-Lobos

While Cariocas will be busy all November at the 47th Festival Villa-Lobos, Paulistas will have their chance to delve into Villa's life and music at the International Villa-Lobos Symposium organized by the Music Department of the University of Sao Paulo, the Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, and the USP Orchestra.  The event takes place from November 16-21.  Here is the program for the Symposium.

For more information go to the Symposium website.

Tribute to Villa-Lobos at the UN

The Tribute to Villa-Lobos at the United Nations in New York continues until Nov. 6. Here's a video explaining the project:

Curator Alcinda Saphita walks through some of the works of art from the exhibition in this video.

Villa-Lobos on Cultura FM: November 2009

Every month I post highlights from the upcoming schedule of Cultura FM from Sao Paulo.  Since you can listen live to this station on the Internet, it's a great way to hear Brazilian classical music.  Occasionally Cultura FM presents live concerts or rare recordings.

This month is special: it's the climax of the Ano Villa-Lobos, with the 50th anniversary of Villa's death coming on the 17th of November.  Cultura FM has set aside big chunks of time to play and discuss Villa-Lobos's music, including the following (Google-translated into more-or-less English):

Highlights of the Villa-Lobos Month:

• Cena Brasileira , Fridays, 20:00, totally devoted to Villa-Lobos,
• O Brasil de Villa-Lobos (The Brazil of Villa-Lobos), Sundays at 11:00 [Museu Villa-Lobos Director Turíbio Santos continues his series],
• Oferenda Musical (Musical Offering), Saturday, Nov. 7, 17:00,
• Supertônica (Supertonic) November 15 at 21:00, the most popular works of the maestro at strategic points in the city,
• From 00h on November 17, interventions throughout the programming marking the anniversary
• The works of the maestro are presented on the programas Tema e Variações (Theme &Variations), Sala de Concerto (Concert Hall), Tarde Cultura e Noturno (Late Night Culture). 

Times are local Sao Paulo times, one hour ahead of EST.

Seresta: Brazilian Serenade

There are so many American jazz musicians with a special relationship to the music of Villa-Lobos. Saxophonists like Branford Marsalis and Steve Wilson, have crossed over to the classical side to perform the Fantasia for Saxophone and Orchestra. Others, beginning famously with Gil Evans' version of BB#2 on Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain, have used Villa-Lobos as source material for jazz compositions. An important project from earlier this year was Robert Irving III's Sketches of Brazil. [Both were discussed in my post here, back in July 2009]. One of the most important projects from the past is 2003's Alegria by Wayne Shorter.

Here's another new project with a really strong Villa-Lobos pedigree. Seresta: Brazilian Serenade is designed as an homage to the composer on the 50th anniversary of his death in 1959, as well as to Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain from the same year. The Steve Griggs Ensemble is based in Seattle, and they will perform Griggs' work there on November 19th. The Seresta page on Griggs' website includes MP3 versions of computer renditions of his arrangements. Here's one of my favourites, "Xo Xo Passarinho" from Cirandas:

I'm impressed with what I've heard, but wish I could be at this performance. I hope it makes its way onto disc as well.

Villa-Lobos on Globo News

This promo for three special films on Villa-Lobos to be shown on Brazil's Globo News, beginning on November 8, includes some awesome home movie clips, plus a bit of Turibio Santos playing the guitar:




I'm assuming that Globo News is something like CBC Newsworld or CNN. I might be wrong, but I can't see either setting aside a lot of time for in-depth programs on classical musicians who died 50 years ago, even to fill their 24-hour schedules.

Thanks to a tweet from @claudiorgs for the heads-up on this.

Modinhas & Canções in NYC

Villa-Lobos wrote two series of Modinhas & Canções: the first in 1936 and the second in 1943. Both will be performed on Sunday, Nov. 3rd, at Christ & St Stephen’s Church in New York City, by soprano Stela Brandão and pianist Max Lifchitz. This free concert is organized by the Pan American Musical Art Research, Inc. (PAMAR), as part of the 4th Annual Latin American Cultural Week.

These two song cycles aren't often performed or recorded that often, but they include some very popular songs. The Lundú da Marqueza de Santos from the first set has become a real favourite, in versions for soprano & tenor, and in various instrumental arrangements (including one in the recent Quinteto Villa-Lobos CD.)

Tribute to Villa-Lobos at the U.N.

Later this month the United Nations will be the scene of a new exhibition "Tribute to Villa-Lobos", featuring paintings by Brazilian artists. One of the featured artists will be the Bahia-born Ferjo, whose room with piano is pictured above. Others include Alexandre Emmanuel, Artur Moreira, Cassia Maia, Flory Menezes, Cila Santos, Ed Ribeiro, Arlete Costa, Luciano Lima Lima, Arnaldo Garcez, Astride Rosa, Junia d’Affonseca, Deborah Costa, Isabel Amaro, Ricardo Nascimento, Iris Alvares, Sandra Romano, Maria Antonia, D. Finotto, Shizue, Laila Guimaraes, Lucia Tolentino, Gzanotti, Ce Granito. Institute Dirson Costa de Arte e Cultura Amazonicas: Indigenous Brazilians from the Amazon Duhigo, Dhiani Pa’saro, Sanipa, Too Xacwa, Yupury, Tchanpan, and Kawena.

The opening reception for the exhibit begins at 6:00 p.m. on October 30th, and will feature a concert by soprano Caroline Braga, tenor Denis Hurtado, guitarist Daniel Duarte, and pianist Livia Sandoval. More information is at the Consulate General of Brazil in New York website.
Thanks to artist Ed Ribeiro @edribeiroart whose tweet put me on to this.

Brazil Inspires Villa-Lobos

From the October 25, 1948 issue of Life (via Google Books). Villa-Lobos had a high reputation in the popular press in America at the time: "...rated by many critics as the best serious composer the Western Hemisphere has produced."

Marcelo Bratke on Radio3

I've written before about Marcelo Bratke's big plans for the Ano Villa-Lobos, 2009. Here is the first part of a Radio3 interview by Sean Rafferty with Bratke (I believe from In Tune, last Sept. 11th).  The second part of the interview is here.  Looks like we have lots to look forward to - especially the upcoming complete Villa-Lobos piano recordings on the Quartz label - from this talented pianist!

Viva Villa!

A major new exhibition on Villa-Lobos has just opened in Rio de Janeiro. Viva Villa! is organized by the Arquivo Nacional, and runs from Oct. 12, 2009, to Jan. 5, 2010. The exhibit has an impressive list of partners, incuding the Museu Villa-Lobos (RJ), Library of Congress (Washington), Richard Rodgers Library, Spanish Institute, New York Public Library (New York), Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecília, and more.

Besides the exhibition of audio-visual materials relating to Villa's life and music, Viva Villa! will include concerts and film presentations.

The film component of the exhibition looks really interesting. Films include Humberto Mauro's "Descobrimento do Brasil", along with films from Brasil's Cinema Novo which feature Villa-Lobos music: "Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol" and "Terra em Transe" by Glauber Rocha; "Macunaíma" by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade; “Arraial do Cabo” by Paulo Cesar Sarraceni; and "Menino de Engenho" by Walter Lima Jr. Of course, Zelito Vianna's important biopic "Villa-Lobos: Uma Vida de Paixao" wll be featured as well.

Choros #10 at The Last Night of the Proms

A really impressive performance of Choros #10, with a huge array of resources masterfully managed by Conductor David Robertson. The BBC's busy cameras help to put you right into the orchestra. Part 2 of the work is here - the singing of the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus is exceptional.

Egberto Gismonti's Saudações

Egberto Gismonti's new album Saudações has been released by ECM in Europe, and will be available in North America later this month.  It's a double album, with the orchestral suite Sertões Veredas - Tributo à Miscigenação on one disc, and a duo-guitar recital with his son Alexandre on the other.

I've only heard clips from the suite, but this article by João Marcos Coelho finds very strong influences of Villa-Lobos and Bach in this music for strings (played on the disc by the Havana-based Camerata Romeu, directed by Zenaida Romeu).  The other strong influence seems to be the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, who was a close friend of Villa-Lobos and someone with a great understanding of music.

According to Coelho, "A primeira audição de Sertões Veredas provoca a estranha sensação de estarmos diante de uma obra do Villa-Lobos inédita e recém-descoberta." - he has the strange sensation of hearing a a newly-discovered unknown score of Villa-Lobos.

I look forward to hearing the entire album, listening for the influences of Villa and Bach.  More importantly, though, it will be great to hear the first orchestral music from a composer for whom I have the greatest respect.

The Quinteto Villa-Lobos Turnê Africana

The Villa-Lobos Concert Locations database includes a long list of cities where about 15 years' worth of Villa-Lobos concerts have taken place. Five new locations have just been added, thanks to the new tour of Africa by the Quinteto Villa-Lobos:

• Tunisia: Cartago
• Botswana: Gabarone
• Namibia: Windhoek
• Mozambique: Maputo
• Kenya: Nairobi

You can follow the tour on the QVL blog.

First reports from "A Menina das Nuvens"

[Foto: divulgação Palácio das Artes / Paulo Lacerda]

The first review of the important production of the opera A Menina das Nuvens - The Girl in the Clouds - has appeared. Irineu Franco Perpetuo writes in the Concerto website that while the opera "may not be the best Villa-Lobos, [...] it is worth knowing."

Perpetuo describes some of the challenges that came with this project, including the dangerous, 7-metre fall of baritone Licio Bruno, which necessitated some cast changes. Apparently Bruno is recovering well from this scary incident.

Perpetuo complains of excessive length and some banal writing by Villa-Lobos in the first two acts. But all comes together in the third, "...where the lush orchestration and neo-romantic Villa-Lobos of the 1950 meets the melodic serenade of the 1930s and some rhythmic and harmonic daring of the 1920s."

Let's hope that this production is a sign that Villa's stage works might be in for more productions, and recordings, in the future.

More about the Instruments of Amazonas

A year ago I wrote about the interesting instruments included in the score of Villa's great early masterpiece Amazonas. Since then I've come across conductor Roberto Duarte's interesting book Revisão das Obras Orquestrais de Villa-Lobos, v.2., which is a detailed description of the scores of important orchestral works.

Duarte's book includes some interesting pictures of two instruments that he actually used in his landmark recording of Amazonas for Marco Polo in 1990. Here is the Violinophone:



and the Viola d'amore:



It's great that this important disc is once again in print. I'm listening to Amazonas right now at the Naxos Music Library: what an amazing work!

Latin Grammy nod for Sonia Rubinsky

The Latin Grammy nominations were announced in Los Angeles this morning. Congratulations to Sonia Rubinsky and the great people at Naxos for a well-deserved nomination. There are two classical categories:

• Best Album, which includes Rubinsky's disc; and
  
• Best Classical Contemporary Composition, which this year includes Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Clarice Assad, Gabriela Lena Frank, Roberto Sierra, and Alfonso Fuentes
  

Rubinsky's disc, the 8th and final one in her monumental series of Villa-Lobos's Piano Music, is worthy of an award not only for the series, but on its own. It includes some very important but under-played works. Rubinsky's recordings have helped to bring this music to a much wider audience; and hopefully to a new generation of pianists. She has helped to raise Villa's reputation as a composer, in the same way that people like Carl St. Clair, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Roberto Minczuk, and John Neschling have done in the past ten years.

Jet Whistle from the 1960s

This performance of Assobio a Jato by Julius Baker & David Soyer is impressive, in spite of some audio distortion. This is the first movement:



and the second & third movments are here.

Villa-Lobos at the Last Night of the Proms

I felt privileged to be able to watch The Last Night of the Proms from the Royal Albert Hall, live via satellite here in Red Deer this weekend. It was a very enjoyable, if slightly exhausting, concert, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Singers & Symphony Chorus, and two amazing soloists (trumpeter Alison Balsom and mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly), all under the direction of David Robertson.

The highlight for me, of course, was Choros #10, which came across in spectacular fashion in the HD presentation, with BBC television's many roving cameras and excellent sound. David Robertson really got under the skin of this piece, which sounds difficult enough to hold together in a regular concert, much less the barely controlled chaos of The Last Night, with its hoovers & shotguns; a raucus crowd with flags, noisemakers, and sparklers; a huge programme of various styles of music; and a daunting technological challenge coordinating the music in the RAH and five Proms in the Park from around the UK.

That's one of the reasons Villa-Lobos fit so well into this concert: his music is barely controlled chaos itself. Choros #10 is a Proms-like concoction of ultra-sophisticated art music, near-silliness, and a well-loved nation-building tune (Rasga o Coração, "Rend my Heart"). Any Rio de Janeiro audience from the 1920s until today could sing this tune in the same way today's Prommers sing "Jerusalem" or "Rule Britannia".

You can hear the tune in this YouTube version of the second part of Choros #10, an excellent version by the Sinfónica de la Juventud Venezolana Simón Bolivar, conducted by Isaac Karabtchevsky:



And here is Anacleto de Medeiros' Schottische "Yara", aka Rasga o Coração, in a performance by pianist José Miguel Wisnik

If you didn't get a chance to watch or hear The Last Night concert, you have 7 days to listen on the web using BBC's iPlayer. You also have 7 days to read the excellent Programme Notes by Robert Maycock.

It was interesting seeing instant feedback on the concert via Twitter posts. Here's a selection (do a Twitter search on #lastnightoftheproms for more):

@sciencesub Oh good they are playing a piece by Hetoir Villa Lobos Now that I like!
@bexxi This Villa-Lobos piece is EXTREMELY cool: like a cross between Leonard Bernstein and Charles Ives.. #proms #radio3
@RoeDent #proms the villa-lobos sounds like 'little train' with added passengers!
@Braziel This Villa-Lobos on the Proms is fantastic. Makes me want to join a choir! Must be great fun to sing. #proms
@dotterel - the Villa Lobos was what we classical music lovers describe as 'absolutely bloody brilliant'. N'est pas? #lastnightproms
@SirCasey Villa Lobos answer to Beethoven's 9th symphony!
@goldsbrough Loved the Villa Lobos piece at the LNOTP. Must get a recording of it. #proms
@wongawoman1 villa lobos a definite highlight tonight at albert hall

It all comes to a climax with this post:

@propagation0 Villa-Lobos is GOD

The BBC isn't resting on its laurels when it comes to Villa-Lobos. This morning (September 14th) they begin a five-programme series on Villa-Lobos in Composer of the Week - I'm listening to the first one as I type this. Donald Macleod provides excellent commentary, along with a very well-chosen list of works from CD.

Video About the Newly Discovered Villa-Lobos Scores

The now-famous Villa-Lobos arrangements of four songs by Guy Ropartz are featured in this new video. It's so cool to see the media give this story so much attention!

Pianos em Jubileu

Ricardo Rocha's Orquestra Bachiana Brasileira will be presenting three serious piano concertos in one concert next weekend in Sao Paulo, by Claudio Santoro, Felix Mendelssohn (#1), and Heitor Villa-Lobos (Bachianas Brasileiras #3, one of his best concertos). More information here.

Complete Symphonies on cpo

Why bother building your Villa-Lobos CD library one disc at a time? In the past few months BIS and Dorian have released the complete Choros, Bachianas Brasileiras, and String Quartets in inexpensive box sets. Now comes this new Complete Symphonies set on 7 CDs.

This is the final piece in the awesome project begun by conductor Carl St. Clair in 1997. Most of the symphonies, and many of the smaller orchestral works, were either world premieres on record, or were the first recordings outside of obscure Brasilian LPs. The orchestral playing of the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir received high marks from critics over the years, as did St. Clair's preparation (from sometimes incomplete or corrupted scores and parts) and conducting. The recording and presentation from cpo also was very warmly received. The jpc.de website is the first place I've seen this posted on the web; the discs are due to be released on September 21, 2009. At €39.99 (about $60), this set is a major bargain!

Villa's Wake

The Velório (wake) for Villa-Lobos: some film footage from nearly 50 years ago.

Review: French Flute Chamber Music

Mirage Quintet: French Flute Chamber Music (Naxos 8.570444)

This year is not only the Ano Villa-Lobos in Brazil (the 50th Anniversary of his death), but also the Ano da França no Brasil, the Year of France. Villa-Lobos had a close relationship with France; Paris was his second home in the 1920s and the 1950s. He had many close friends amongst the musicians of France: Edgard Varèse, Olivier Messiaen, Florent Schmitt.

This new CD of French Flute Chamber Music from Naxos contains music from many of the composers Villa hung out with in Paris, and more importantly, the music on this disc participates in a certain style and sound from that time that Villa made his own, in works like the Nonetto, the Choros series, and the great early piano works.

The 1970s pop/rock group E.L.O. (Electric Light Orchestra) was famously formed to "pick up where [The Beatles'] 'I Am the Walrus' left off." Similarly, all the works on this CD come out of the sound world created by a single piece: Maurice Ravel's 1905 Introduction et Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet, and String Quartet. This lineup of composers comes from Ravel's generation, except for the youngster Francaix, who is 30-40 years younger than the rest. The pieces were all written in the 1920s or 1930s, all of them for flute, harp, and strings.

Though the music exists in that same sound world, subtle differences in the personalities of the composers emerge. Francaix is playful, Roussel muscular, and Schmitt nostalgic and a bit sentimental. Marcel Tournier's Suite, Op. 34 is a special treat. I knew, and enjoyed, the piece from a Hanssler Classic CD with the Linos Harp Quintet, but the Mirage Quintet give the work a forward momentum and depth that really makes it stand out. You can get a feel for this from the Mirage Quintet's YouTube video of the 3rd Movement (Lied: Assez Lent, Avec Melancolie) filmed during the CD recording in Toronto in 2007.



This recording took place under the watchful eyes and ears of the great team of Bonnie Silver & Norbert Kraft, who between them share producer, engineer, and editor functions. Kraft, by the way, is the very same guitarist who completely nailed the Villa-Lobos guitar music for Naxos in 2000. The sound on the new disc is predictably excellent, though some might argue that Robert Aitken's flute is too forward in the mix. It's hard to see how this music could be played or presented any better.

In 1957 Villa-Lobos wrote his Quintette Instrumental for Flute, violin, viola, cello, and harp, which looks back to the Ravel and Debussy models, and perhaps also to works like the Roussel Serenade and the Quintet by Guy Ropartz. But Villa's distinctive voice comes out very strongly in this late masterpiece. I would move the Villa-Lobos work to the top of the list of the pieces I've discussed in this review (all right, second after the Ravel!) Listen to the Quintette as played by the group mobius (also on Naxos, and available on the Naxos Music Library) and tell me if you agree.

Review: Klang der Welt - Brasilien

Here's a CD I took notice of back in July, when it showed up in the Naxos Music Library. Now that I've had a chance to listen more closely to it, I'm posting a fuller review here.

Klang der Welt: Brasilien

Heitor Villa-Lobos looms large in Brazil, and not just in the classical music world. In Brazilian popular music, jazz, and popular culture, and especially in this Ano Villa-Lobos (the 50th anniversary of his death), Villa-Lobos is everywhere. This makes it hard for the composers of Villa's generation, and those who followed him, to get noticed. This disc is a welcome introduction to some names that might not be well known to music lovers. Perhaps the new interest in Villa-Lobos in Brazil and around the world will be the tide that raises all boats.

The one fairly well-known work in this chronologically organized CD is Villa-Lobos's Quinteto em forma de Choros, written in 1928. It's a masterpiece, closely related to the Choros series that many (including myself) believe constitutes Villa's greatest achievement.

Luciano Gallet's Turuna for Clarinet, Violin, Viola, & Percussion is from 1926, and it's a real find. The work reflects Gallet's expertise in Brazilian folklore and popular music. It has the same fresh sound of the urban serenaders known as Choroes that permeates Villa-Lobos's music of the 1920s. The music really swings. But the Turuna shares with the Quinteto and the following work, Camargo Guarnieri's Two Songs for Flute and Voice, a sophisticated, modernist voice that relates to Villa-Lobos's strongest influences: Stravinsky, Debussy, and the many composers Villa met in Paris. You can hear in both the Gallet and Guarnieri, for example, the flute and clarinet sounds of Choros #02 of 1924. These works show that the international modernist style of Paris had found fertile ground in Brazil.

Francisco Mignone, who worked in both the nationalist and modernist styles and even flirted with serialism in the 1950s, wrote the Five Songs for Voice & Bassoon relatively late in a very long and productive career. The songs look back to the 1920s, and earlier, to the salon music of the late nineteenth century. There are few composers who write better for the bassoon - bassoonists should take up these songs in the same way they have adopted the witty Waltzes for Solo Bassoon.

Claudio Santoro's Mini Concerto Grosso is a gorgeous piece. It's a stylized work that looks back on neo-classicism in the same way that neo-classicism looked back on earlier music. It looks back to the new Brazilian style that Villa-Lobos took up in the 1930s. Santoro, like Mignone, had gone through a variety of styles (he shared a teacher, Hans Joachim Koellreutter, with Antonio Carlos Jobim, and also studied with Nadia Boulanger). Ronaldo Miranda's Variations also look back to an earlier period in Brazilian music: to a much-loved song by Anacleto de Medeiros, whose choros and schottisches from the turn of the century had a major influence on Brazilian popular music and art music alike.

Joao Guilherme Ripper was born in the year that Villa-Lobos died, and his star has risen very high in the last few years, with major triumphs in choral music and opera. Matinas, from 1996, is another strong work to close this enjoyable and illuminating programme from the very capable musicians of the Deutschen Oper Berlin.

A Musical Mandala

Violinist Gil Morgenstern presents a fascinating concert in his Reflections series: "A Musical Mandala: From Bach to Barkauskas and Back", on October 18th at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. This is a typical high-concept presentation for Morgenstern, who is accompanied by pianist Donald Berman, and one that I would dearly love to attend:

The mandala is used in many religious traditions as an artistic aid for meditation to advance practitioners toward a state of enlightenment. A Musical Mandala takes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach as its starting point and circles through works by Schumann, Ysaye, Bartok, Barkauskas, Villa-Lobos, and Kreisler. Join us as we meditate on Bach's enormous influence on enlightened composers and audiences over a period of more than 300 years.

The Reflections series then goes on the road, to the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach on November 18, to North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and to Florence, Capri, and Rome, Italy.

Maybe I'll catch the concert in Capri.

Villalobiana in Mexico City

The Escuela Nacional de Musica at UNAM in Mexico City will be marking "el cincuentenario luctuoso" ("mournful anniversary") of the death of Villa-Lobos on November 17 & 19th of this year. This call for participation goes out to those connected with the school. This promises to be a significant Villa-Lobos event.

Villa-Lobos on Cultura FM: September 2009

Here are Villa-Lobos performances upcoming on Cultura FM from Sao Paulo. Listen here on the Internet. Times are local Sao Paulo times, one hour ahead of EST. Recommended: the Sunday series "O Brasil de Villa-Lobos" with Museu Villa-Lobos Director Turíbio Santos.

September 1:
07:00 DESPERTE COM OS CLÁSSICOS:
HAYDN - Allegro moderato do concerto em ré maior, op.101. Jacqueline Durpé (violoncelo). Orquestra Sinfônica de Londres. Reg.: Daniel Baremboim. / Johann Christian BACH - Sinfonia, op. 3 n° 5 em fá maior. Orquestra do Festival de Londres. Reg.: Ross Pople. / BRAHMS - Allegro Appassionato da sonata em fá menor, op. 120 n°1. Richard Stoltzman (clarineta). Richard Goode (piano). / VILLA-LOBOS -Bachianas Brasileiras n° 5. Maria Bayo (soprano). Orquestra Nacional de Lyon. Reg.: Emmanuel Krivine.

September 4:
23:00 NOTURNO:
VILLA-LOBOS - Plantio do caboclo. Lydia Kennedy e Frans Van Gurp (violões). John TAVENER - Aleluia. Coro Sinfônico de São Francisco. Reg.: Vance George.

September 6:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS - por Turíbio Santos - Edição Especial:
Prelúdios para Violão Goran Sollscher (violão) / Suíte para orquestra de câmara nº 2. Orquestra da Universidade de São Paulo. Reg. Carlos Moreno
Fantasia para saxofone Theodore Kerkezoz (saxofone)

September 9:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Teresa Lima:
Joseph HAYDN - Sinfonia Hob. I: 72. Sinfônica Bamberger. Reg.: Jonathan Nott. / Osvaldo LACERDA - Poemeto / Cantilena / Toccatina. Antonio Carlos Carrasqueira (flauta). Maria José Carrasqueira (piano). / VILLA-LOBOS - Pequena Suíte. Zygmunt St. Kubala (violoncelo). Rosana Civile (piano).

September 12:
10:00 CIRANDA - Academia Brasileira de Música:
José Alberto KAPLAN - Variantes para flauta, violão e orquestra. Regina Lima Machado (flauta). Eugênio Lima de Souza (violão). Orquestra da Universidade Federal da Paraíba. Reg.: Carlos Anísio. / Radamés GNATTALI - Trio para bandolim e dois violões / Joel Nascimento (bandolim), Luiz Otávio Braga e Bartolomeu Wiese (violões). Clovis PEREIRA - Três peças nordestinas. Quinteto da Paraíba. / VILLA-LOBOS - A prole do bebê nº 1. Nelson Freire (piano).

September 13:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS - por Turíbio Santos - Edição Especial Quartour para flauta, oboé clarineta e fagote.Joachim Schmitz (flauta), Petra Fhuhr (oboé), Johannes Moog (clarineta), Urich Freund (fagote). Sonata fantasia n° 2 para violino e piano - Nngagul Tumaugelov (violino) Bojidor Noer (piano). Lenda do caboclo, e Alma brasileira. Sergio e Odair Assad (Violão). Ciranda das sete notas.Orquestra New Music Stagium. Reg. Antonio Plotino. Sino Vernizzi (fagote).

20:00 MUSICA CONTEMPORANEA - Concertos CPFL ao vivo. Apresentação: João Marcos Coelho.
O grupo Sonax constrói seus próprios instrumentos, e seus integrantes criaram coletivamente a suíte "Villa-Lobos Landscape", tendo como convidado o violeiro Paulo Freire.

September 14:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Teresa Lima:
Ernesto NAZARETH - Confidências - Valsa. Izumi Tateno (piano). / Peter Joseph von LINDPAINTNER - Concerto em fá maior Op. 44. Albrecht Holder (fagote). Orquestra Filarmônica de Stuttgart. Reg.: Nicolas Pasquet. / VILLA-LOBOS - Segunda sonata para violoncelo e piano Op. 66. Tânia Lisboa (violoncelo). Miriam Braga (piano). Yang Zhang (violino).

23:00 NOTURNO:
Ferrucio BUSONI - Peças características para clarinete e piano. Dieter Klöcker (clarinete). Werner Genuit (piano). / VILLA-LOBOS - Estudos. Sérgio e Odair Assad (violão).

September 16:
07:00 DESPERTE COM OS CLÁSSICOS:
MOZART - Andante com cinco variações em sol maior, K. 501. Jeno Jandó e Zsuzsa Kollár (piano a quatro mãos)./ MILHAUD - Saudades do Brasil. Orquestra Nacional da França. Dir. Leonard Bernstein./ VILLA-LOBOS - Prelúdio das "Bachianas Brasileiras" nº 4. Orquestra de Câmara "Solistas de Londrina"./ GERSHWIN - Rhapsody in Blue. Leornard Bernstein (piano e regência). Orq. Filarmônica de Los Angeles.

September 20:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS - por Turíbio Santos - Edição Especial: Sinfonia nº 1 e nº 6 de Villa-lobos Orquestra Sinfônica da Rádio de Stuttgart Carl St. Clair.

20:00 MUSICA CONTEMPORANEA - Concertos CPFL ao vivo. Apresentação: João Marcos Coelho:
"De Bach à Floresta Amazônica", de junho passado. Edna d'Oliveira (soprano) interpreta canções de Villa-Lobos acompanhada pelo notável violonista Sidney Molina.

September 22 (repeated September 23, 1:00)
14:00 PIANÍSSIMO - Apresentação do pianista e professor Gilberto Tinetti:
VILLA-LOBOS: CONCERTOS - CRISTINA ORTIZ

September 27:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS - por Turíbio Santos - Edição Especial: Rudepoema . Nelson Freire (Piano). Prelúdio n° 2 para piano e violoncelo - Antonio Menezes (violoncelo), Cristina Ortiz (piano).

September 28:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Teresa Lima:
CHOPIN - Balada n° 1 em sol menor Op. 23. Murray Perahia (piano). / Josef SUK - Fantastické Scherzo Op. 25. Orquestra Filarmônica Tcheca. Reg.: Jirí Belohlávek. / VILLA-LOBOS - Trio n° 1 em dó menor. Tânia Lisboa (violoncelo). Miriam Braga (piano). Yang Zhang (violino).

September 30:
20:00 O VIOLÃO NA ERA DO DISCO: Juliam Bream - com Sidney Molina :
Gravações dos álbuns, "Julian Bream Plays Villa-Lobos" (1971), "Together" (1971), "The Woods so Wild" (1972) e "Julian Bream 70s" (1973).

Brubeck & Martins at Lincoln Center

Here's some exciting news: jazz legend Dave Brubeck & Brazilian conductor and pianist João Carlos Martins will be performing at New York's Lincoln Center this October. Martins, a former piano virtuoso who now conducts the Bachiana Filarmônica, will bring his orchestra with him from Brazil to Avery Fisher Hall. He'll conduct Bachianas Brasilieras #7, and he and Dave Brubeck will perform Bach together.

“The rapport between João Carlos and me was instant. And ever since that time we shared many a musical thought which is what the October 2nd concert is all about." - Dave Brubeck

Watch this excellent YouTube video to learn more about the close relationship these two great musicians have built together over the years:

Magnificat Alleluia at FIC 2009

The Festival Internacional de Corais (FIC 2009) website includes this page which includes the score, in various formats, for a choral arrangement of the 1958 Magnificat-Alleluia (originally written for mixed choir & orchestra). Here is a video (again, thanks to the FIC website) of the Orquestra Sinfônica e Coro de Câmara da Escola de Música da UFMG, directed by Vivian Assis. The soloist is Luciana Monteiro.

Villa-Lobos at MIMO 2009

The Mostra Internacional de Música em Olinda (MIMO) is an annual festival in Olinda, Pernambuco, in the North East region of Brazil. This year's festival includes a number of concerts with music by Villa-Lobos, including concerts with the Quarteto Radamés Gnattali and the Orquestra Sinfônica de Barra Mansa.

Festival Internacional de Corais

This international choral festival, which begins on September 18 in Minas Gerais, honours the legacy of Heitor Villa-Lobos. It's another major project during this Ano Villa-Lobos.

The festival has also organized two audio-visual exhibitions with the help of the Museu Villa-Lobos, one permanent, and another which goes on the road throughout Brazil beginning on Sept. 10. The FIC website has all sort of interesting information.

Here's something cool: every year (this is the 7th annual version) maestro Leonardo Cunha writes a theme song for the festival. This year's is called Mestre Villa:


The website includes PDF and MP3 versions of the music. Here are the lyrics of this piece, written by Fernando Brant.

MESTRE VILLA
(Leonardo Cunha e Fernando Brant)

a canção do povo
quem a fez foi Villa
que ouviu a alma do Brasil

mais que brasileira
é canção do mundo
foi o Mestre Villa quem criou

a cantiga, o choro, o violão
a seresta e vozes em coral
a ciranda, a dança e o lundu
floresta amazônica de sons

("olha a rosa amarela, rosa
tão bonita e tão bela, rosa
olha a rosa amarela, rosa
tão bonita e tão bela, rosa")

o Magnificat-Alleluia bate lá no coração
trenzinho atravessando o nosso interior
as Bachianas Brasileiras inventando um Brasil
que vive em nosso canto, em nossa voz.

In Google Translate's English version:

MASTER VILLA
(Leonardo Cunha & Fernando Brant)
the song of the people
who made it was Villa
who heard the soul of Brazil

more than Brazilian
the world is song
Villa was the Master who created

the song, the crying, the guitar
the singers and choral voices
the nursery rhymes, dance and lundu
rainforest sounds

( "look at the yellow rose, pink
so beautiful, so beautiful, pink
look at the yellow rose, pink
so beautiful, so beautiful, pink ")

Magnificat-Alleluia there beats the heart
interior train crossing our inner
the Bachianas Brasileiras inventing a Brazil
that lives in our corner, our voice.

Music & Dictatorship in Europe & Latin America

I look forward to reading this really interesting book; I came across this Pre-Publication Announcement at the Interesting Music Stuff blog:

Music and Dictatorship in Europe and Latin America
Edited by Roberto Illiano and Massimiliano Sala
approx. 700 p., 210 x 270 mm, HB, ISBN 978-2-503-52779-6, EUR 125
Special pre-publication price: €105 valid until 31 October 2009
Series: Speculum musicae, vol. 14
Publication date: November 2009

The most interesting article for the Villa-Lobos scholar is T. Garcia's "Music and the Brazilian Estado Novo: Getúlio Vargas, Heitor Villa-Lobos and a National Music Education System," from which the following page is taken.


As I mentioned in a post earlier this year, we need a fuller discussion of Villa-Lobos's relationship with the darker side of the Vargas regime. It looks like this book might provide more information about both the particular case in Brazil and its context in the 20th century.

It's a coincidence, by the way, that I should come across the book A música nacionalista no govêrno Getulio Vargas twice in two days. This looks like a job for InterLibrary Loan!

The Yale Glee Club, Robert Goulet, and the Brazilian National Anthem

The Yale Glee Club is 150 years old this year, and naturally there are many interesting stories to be told. This post on the Yale Glee Club blog, "From Charlton Lyons - Reviews of the 1941 Tour," tells a great one about a performance in Rio de Janeiro with a special guest:

...the world famous composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, who was not merely in the audience that night but who, by prearrangement, came up on the stage to conduct the Yale Glee Club in its performance of its first number, the Brazilian National Anthem. And it was during our singing of their National Anthem that Villa-Lobos turned to the audience to conduct the audience as well. The Yale Glee Club did know that country’s national anthem—we knew it very, very well and could sing it a splendid version of Portuguese, but the Brazilians did not. I remember the occasion perfectly—well, almost perfectly. I have no recollection of the near silence of the audience reported by the reviewer, a silence owing to the fact that only a few could sing it. But, singing my own head off, I would not have heard that silence anyway, would I? No! Certainly not!

It's a great story from the Glee Club point of view, but it must have been a bit of an embarrassment for Villa-Lobos. That same year he published

A Música Nacionalista no Govêrno Getúlio Vargas ca. 1941, in which he characterised the nation as a sacred entity whose symbols (including its flag, motto and national anthem) were inviolable. Villa-Lobos was the chair of a committee whose task was to define a definitive version of the Brazilian national anthem.

The quote is from the Wikipedia article on Villa-Lobos, this section of which is based on Simon Wright's 1992 Villa-Lobos. When I read the Glee Club story, though, it made me think about the famous National Anthem incident starring Canadian Robert Goulet (again thanks to Wikipedia):

On May 25, 1965, Goulet mangled the lyrics to the United States National Anthem at the opening of the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston heavyweight championship fight in Lewiston, Maine. Goulet had never sung the anthem in public before, and replaced the lyrics "dawn's early light" and "gave proof through the night" with "dawn's early night" and "gave proof through the fight." The gaffe was reported in newspapers nationwide the next morning, and Goulet was criticized in opinion columns for a lack of knowledge of the lyrics.

The best part of the story isn't included here. I remember hearing Goulet talk about how, at a nightclub gig soon after this incident, he began to sing "O Say Can You See..." as a joke. He assumed that everyone had heard what happened, and would treat it as a joke as well. When the crowd began to sing along, though, he had no choice but to continue as well, and mangled the words once again.

I love that story. Goulet, by the way, was born to French Canadian parents in Massachussets, but spent his formative years 600 km to the north (!) of Red Deer's Villa-Lobos Central Control, in Girouxville, Alberta.

But back to the Hino Nacional Brasileiro. The Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado do Sao Paulo and their conductor John Neschling have recorded a CD of the absolutely authentic versions of the National Anthem (in orchestral and choral versions), and other national songs:

01. Hino Nacional Brasileiro - versão instrumental
02. Hino Nacional Brasileiro - versão com coro
03. Hino da Independência
04. Hino da Bandeira Nacional
05. Hino da Proclamação da República

You can download the entire album for free, thanks to the Osesp website. While you're there, check out their many freely-available podcasts.

Brazilian Music MP3s

For a limited time this sampler album of eight MP3s can be downloaded for free from Amazon.com's MP3 store. The songs are by Grupo Batuque, Sabrina Malheiros, The Ipanemas, Joyce, Clara Moreno, Azymuth, Jose Roberto Bertrami and His Modern Sound, and Marcos Valle.

There's lots more information about these musicians and this music from the website of the great Far Out Recordings company.

These downloads are only available on for Americans, unfortunately.

About the New Villa-Lobos scores

The story of the newly-discovered scores of Villa-Lobos has some legs. AP has picked the story up, and I've seen it featured in a number of Portuguese and French music blogs. Here's some new information from Marcelo Rodolfo at the Museu Villa-Lobos in Rio - thanks, Marcelo!:

The great Brazilian soprano Vera Janacopulos, in order to help Villa-Lobos, asked him to arrange/transcribe to her songs by other composers and Guy de Ropartz was one of them.

Let's hope that the current crop of Brazilian sopranos are lining up to record these new songs!

P.S. Thanks to Vera Janacopulos, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and the estagiários (interns) who discovered these scores nearly 90 years after they were written, for leading me to the amazing music of Guy Ropartz.

Who is Guy Ropartz?

And why did Villa-Lobos orchestrate his music?

I hadn't come across Joseph Guy Ropartz before - his dates are 1864-1955, so he was in the generation before Villa-Lobos. The very informative Wikipedia article provide the following information:

Born in Brittany, Ropartz studied in Paris with such important teachers as Jules Massenet and César Franck. From 1919 to 1929 he was busy in Alsace, as the Director of the Strasbourg Academy, and of the Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1929 he retired to Brittany, and died there in 1955, four years before Villa-Lobos.

This short resume of Ropartz's life shows that it was very unlikely that Villa-Lobos's connection to him was personal (as so many of his connections were - think of his close relationships with Edgard Varese, Olivier Messiaen, Florent Schmitt). The newly-discovered orchestrations were dated 1921, and Villa didn't arrive in Paris until 1923. In spite of the difference in their ages and their musical interests, though, there is a connection between these two composers. A French blog post about the newly-found scores calls Ropartz "son homologue français," Villa's French counterpart.

The Wikipedia article points to the probable reason that Villa chose this composer to adapt:
Ropartz wrote that he was the son of a country "where the goblins populate the moor and dance by the moony nights around the menhirs; where the fairies and the enchanters - Viviane and Merlin - have as a field the forest of Brocéliande; where the spirits of the unburied dead appear all white above the waters of the Bay of the Departed." This interest in the world of folklore was shared by the composer of Amazonas and Uirapuru (1917), both of which are about the same fairy-world creatures of the forest that interested Ropartz. I very recently blogged about the mythological forest being that inhabits the First String Quartet, from the same period (1915).

The Wikipedia article includes this quote about Robartz by Rene Dumesnil in Le Monde. It could have been written about Villa-Lobos as well:

"There is with Ropartz a science of folklore and its proper use, which one admires; but more often than the direct use of popular motifs it is an inspiration drawn from the same soil which nourishes the work, like sap in trees."

I'm listening to Ropartz's First Symphony "On a Breton Chorale" on a Timpani recording with the Nancy Symphony, conducted by Sebastien Lang-Lessing (on the Naxos Music Library). This music sounds as connected to the folkloric world as any of Villa's works. "I am Folklore", Villa-Lobos famously said, and these motifs were completely internalized in his music, permeating his greatest works (any of the Bachianas Brasileiras, for example), whether or not they have a program.

An additional musical link between Ropartz and the earlier symphonic works of Villa-Lobos may exist because of their shared adherence to the compositional teachings of Vincent d'Indy, though I'm not well enough versed in musical theory to pull out those particular threads myself.

I predict that when more information is released about these new scores, it will turn out that the Ropartz works in question have folkloric themes.

Rediscovered Villa-Lobos scores

Hard on the heels of the newly-discovered Mozart scores comes the news about previously unknown Villa-Lobos works in Rio de Janeiro. They were discovered in the library of the Escola de Música da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).

These aren't new Bachianas Brasileiras, though (or the missing Choros or Symphony), but Villa-Lobos's orchestration of four pieces by the French composer Guy Ropartz (1864-1955). Still, it would be nice to hear these, or at least learn more about them. The full story is here.

A Ciranda do Villa

A 50-minute play for children entitled "A Ciranda do Villa" premieres in Sao Paulo this weekend.

The play, written by Evill Rebouças and directed by Gira de Oliveira, narrates the life of the composer, with a back-drop of Brazilian folk-song. During a dream, the young 'Tuhu' (Villa's nickname as a boy - it means 'Flame' in the Tupi language) travels to the five regions of Brazil, encountering figures from folklore (the prankster saci, the demon curupira and the werewolf lobisomem), each of whom has a song that turns up in Villa's later compositions.

This clever concept is brought to the stage by the Cia. Lúdicos de Teatro Popular. There are two performances, on Saturday the 22nd, and Sunday the 23rd, at the Teatro de Arena Eugênio Kusnet in Sao Paulo. Thanks to this story in the Guia da Folha Online for the head's-up on this.

The Saci, by the way, is featured in the last movement of the first String Quartet "Saltando Como Um Saci" - Jumping Like a Saci. You can imagine this Loki-like figure while you listen to the Bessler-Reis quartet play it online at Radio UOL.

[Pictured to the right, Saci Pererê - Mitologia brasileira, by artist André Koehne, from the Wikipedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.]

Wilfrid Mellers on Villa-Lobos

You can't always tell what kind of article you're going to get when you look at a citation in a database:

Review: Letters from (South) America
Wilfrid Mellers
Reviewed work(s): The Villa-Lobos Letters by Lisa M. Peppercorn; Villa-Lobos
The Musical Times, Vol. 138, No. 1858 (Dec., 1997), pp. 18-20

Villa's letters often illuminate his life, and occasionally illuminate his music. Peppercorn's book presents this as well as can be expected, but in the end these are not Mozart's letters to his family.

But Mellers is a really good music critic, and a really good writer. I ended up getting an awful lot of pleasure from this three-page review article, and I learned about Villa-Lobos's music as well.

"Villa-Lobos countered Latin exuberance with Latin passivity, accepting the chaos of the contemporary scene since anything was grist to his voracious mill. He was even less self-critical than were Milhaud and Koechlin: which is why his music impresses most when it is most fortuitous."

Meller's insights are thick on the ground here. I start to quote them, and then I realize I'd need to include the whole three pages. The Musical Times might not appreciate that. But here's a good one:

"Villa-Lobos was a crossover artist long before the genre had been invented. As a lad in the streets of Rio he joined with his mates in jam-sessions wherein any number of performers, using any instruments that came to hand, improvised at random, with no more than a pulse, a metrical pattern, a chord sequence, or a snatch of half-remembered tune to keep them going, if not together."

and here is Mellers' virtuoso list of Villa's influences:

"...traces of Renaissance ecclesiastical polyphony (at which some Amerindians became oddly proficient), of Spanish zarzuela, Portuguese fado, Italian romantic opera and popular song, French vaudeville and cafe-concert, plus a few pockets of familiar Teutonic classics and a substratum of Victorian and Edwardian British salon music. Entangled with this European detritus was a Negroid strain precipitated from the slave trade, including the germs of jazz: which in turn linked up with the mechanised media culture of the United States. Whereas in the work of Europeans such as Janacek, Bartok, and Stravinsky primitivism was absorbed into civilised traditions, in Latin America the sundry layers coexisted, side by side. So Villa-Lobos's imagination teemed with musical images of the Brazilian jungle, of the lost Indian cities, of Portuguese and Spanish colonisations, and of the North American skyscraper and roadhouse."

Wilfrid Mellers was an extraordinary scholar; read the obituary that was printed in The Times Online after his death in 2005. I was struck by how widespread Mellers' interests were, both as a writer and a composer. The only book of his that I know is the 2001 Singing in the Wilderness: Music and the Ecology in the 20th Century, which includes a chapter on Villa-Lobos. I look forward to reading more Mellers. Just the titles are great enough:

• Twilight of the Gods: the Beatles in Retrospect (1973)
• Bach and the Dance of God (1980)
• Beethoven and the Voice of God (1983)
• A Darker Shade of Pale: a Backdrop to Bob Dylan (1984)

Bachianas in Aspen

The InstantEncore website has added lots of new music this summer. Here's a recent concert that you can stream online - it's from August 8th, and it features cellos from the Aspen Festival Orchestra, soprano Carla Janzen, and mezzo-soprano Jazmina MacNeil. The programme includes Bachianas Brasileiras #1, BB#5 (with Janzen), and music by George Benjamin, Anne Wilson, Julius Klengel, and Astor Piazzolla (arranged by Derek Snyder).

Harvey Steiman reviews this concert at MusicWeb International's website. Apparently there were 37 cellists on stage for the event, which was billed as "A Recital with Cellos." Like Steiman, I was impressed by the playing of the cellos in the Villa-Lobos works, and by the moving piece by Anne Wilson called "Lament (In Memory of Matthew Shepard)".

I listened to this concert on the new Aspen Music Festival iPhone application, powered by InstantEncore. This free app is a winner - I'll be listening to lots of music from Aspen while riding my bike this summer & fall.

Villa-Lobos & His Contemporaries

This week the School of Music at UFRJ in Rio de Janeiro presents a music festival entitled "Villa-Lobos e seus contemporâneos" - Villa-Lobos & his contemporaries. Concerts from August 10-14 include some very rarely-performed works such as Choros #03, the Quarteto simbolico, and the Fantasia em três movimentos em forma de choros.

The juxtaposition of these works with the music of Stravinsky, Bartok, Berg, and Webern will help to show the avante garde nature of Villa's music from the teens & 20s. This series is yet another example of how seriously everyone is taking the Ano Villa-Lobos in Brazil. You can't walk down the street in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo without coming across a Choros or Bachianas!

It's fitting that UFRJ celebrates Villa-Lobos, since he's an alumnus of sorts. In 1903 the composer, busy with his work as a musician at bars & restaurants, registered for some music courses at the University:

“Villa-Lobos foi aluno da escola em 1903 em um curso noturno, porque ele trabalhava tocando em bares e restaurantes e, por isso, só conseguia estudar nesse curso noturno”, conta o diretor da Escola de Música da UFRJ, André Cardoso. [from a story about UFRJ music school's 160th Anniversary at the O Globo website. There's a cool video on this page: it takes a while to load, but it's worth waiting for.]

[Pictured above: the cover of this month's VivaMúsica! magazine.]

August is Villa-Lobos String Quartet Month

This began as a comment to my review of the new Dorian box-set of the complete String Quartets, but I think it deserves its own post.

August 2009 is indeed a big month for the 17 String Quartets of Villa-Lobos. Besides the release of the superb box-set of the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, and their Mexico City performance of the complete cycle later this month, we have another performance of all of the string quartets. This one is at the Museu Villa-Lobos in Rio de Janeiro, and it's by the Quarteto Radamés Gnattali, on August 12-13, 20-21, and 27-28.

Actually, I was wrong about the August concerts. I can't imagine how I screwed this up. Cariocas will have to wait until November for their complete cycle.

The Quarteto Radamés Gnattali will perform the complete string quartets on the following dates:

• At Museu Villa-Lobos: November 10, 13, 24 and 28
• At Sala Guiomar Novaes (a small auditorium located at Sala Cecília Meireles): November 16, 18 and 21
  

Thanks to Marcelo Rodolfo from the Museu Villa-Lobos for the correction and the new information.

The Gnattali Quartet website includes streaming audio of the Poco Animato movement from the sixth quartet from their Quadro Brasil CD.

Complete String Quartets box set from Dorian

"The writing is crazy, but it has a point. It's the added salsa and when you play the quartets you have to make them spicy." - first violinist Saúl Bitrán

From 1995 to 2001, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano recorded all 17 of the Villa-Lobos string quartets. These were released on the Dorian label on six individual CDs, with two or three pieces on each disc, often with early, middle, and late works mixed together for variety. The performances were hailed by most critics as the definitive performances, which is saying quite a bit. Villa's string quartets were already well-served on CD, with complete cycles by the Bessler-Reis quartet on (the late, lamented) Brazilian label Kuarup, and by the Danubius Quartet on Marco Polo. There were also recordings of individual works by the Brazilian String Quartet (#01, 06, & 17); the Stuyvesant Quartet (#06); Quadro Brasil (#06); Quarteto Brasileiro da UFRJ (#06, 11, & 17, on separate discs); and the Hollywood String Quartet (#06 again!).

As good as some of those other performances are, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano own these works; they are the best advocates I know for this amazing music.

Now Dorian has put together a box-set of the six CDs, remastered and nicely packaged (in the thinner style which takes up less shelf-space - an important factor for my Villa-Lobos CD collection!) The Dorian CDs always sounded great, and their remastering for this set polishes things up so you feel even more in the presence of the musicians. Dorian has added a seventh disc: a DVD of the group performing #01, and an interview with the musicians talking about Villa-Lobos and his music. There's a really excellent booklet with valuable notes by Juan Arturo Brennan. The pictures chosen for the set (especially the one on the cover of the booklet, which is reproduced above) give a feel for the genial composer writing for this most genial musical form.

The interview is amazing, and I plan on watching it again more carefully. The members of the Cuarteto Latinoamericano - the three Bitrán brothers (Saúl, Arón, & Alvaro) and Javier Montiel - have lived with these works for a long time, and are very thoughtful about the music not just in terms of technique and musicality, but as part of a broader idea of Latin American culture. It's interesting to compare this interview (done in 2009, I presume, or late 2008) with the one the Cuarteto gave to Ken Smith more than a decade ago (published as "Spicing up the harmonies," in The Strad, January 1997, p. 27.) I've learned so much about Villa's music from this article. These musicians who lived so long with this music have the confidence to look at it critically, and to make adjustments that the busy Villa-Lobos might have made if he had time for a second thought:

The first violin has long sections of melody in parallel fourths which work fine on the piano but are incredibly awkward on the violin. I think that he wrote too fast and never revised, because if he thought for a minute about some of his intervals, he would have changed them. This is the major problem with the quartets, because people who don't take the time to revoice [redistributing lines among parts] some passages will play them badly.

This reminds me of things Carl St. Clair said about awkware passages in the scores of the Symphonies, and that Kenneth Schermerhorn said about the Bachianas Brasileiras, whose scores were littered with errors. Andres Segovia said the same thing:

Others have written things that were impossible. Villa-Lobos, for example, was a good friend of mine, but in composing for the guitar, he would write a chord that was possible, then another chord that was also possible. But to go from the first chord to the second was impossible [laughs].

[Interviewed by Allan Kozinn, in The Guitar Player Book by Mike Molenda]

Having recorded the entire cycle of 17 string quartets and performed the cycle five times (with another coming up in Mexico City later this month), these musicians rate this music very highly. In the DVD interview Saúl Bitrán puts these works in the same league as the cycles by Bartok and Shostakovich, and says that Villa-Lobos' string quartets are much more creative and much more original than the two great 20th century series.

The string quartets include some avante-garde features (especially #03 from 1916, which was the musical centrepiece of the 1922 Semana de Arte Moderna in Sao Paulo):

Back in 1916, before Bartok or Shostakovich, he wrote a complete movement with left-hand pizzicatos and double harmonics; things no one else had ever thought of. [Arón Bitrán, from the Smith interview]

If they flirt with the exoticism which most people connect with Villa-Lobos they do so only to a certain extent. You might not recognise the string quartets as being by the same composer as the Sixth or Tenth Choros. At the end of the cycle, the string quartets become more neo-classic and less emotional. The final works, written when Villa-Lobos was ill, are meditative and suffused with "saudade", the Brazilian version of nostalgic sadness. It's really sad that Villa didn't get a chance to finish his 18th String Quartet, which he was working on when he died. Only sketches remain (they're in the Museu Villa-Lobos).

Keep an eye on the Cuarteto Latinoamericano - their excellent website is a good way to do this. It includes a concert calendar that shows how busy these four musicians are. This Sunday, August 9th, 2009, for example, they're in Santander, Spain, playing Villa's first quartet, along with Turina's fourth and the Spanish composer Agustin González Acilú's sixth quartets. This is the group's 30th anniversary year; let's hope they're around for a long, long time to come.

Villa-Lobos on Cultura FM - August 2009

Here are Villa-Lobos performances upcoming on Cultura FM from Sao Paulo. Listen here on the Internet. Times are local Sao Paulo times, one hour ahead of EST.

August 6:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Teresa Lima:
CHOPIN - Noturno Op. 62 n° 1. Vladimir Horowitz (piano). / MOZART - Sinfonia n° 38 em ré maior K 504. Orquestra de Câmara da Europa. Reg.: Nikolaus Harnoncourt. / VILLA-LOBOS- Suíte Popular. Quinteto Villa-Lobos.

August 7:
23:00 NOTURNO:
Joaquín TURINA - Oração do Toureiro, opus 34. Orquestra Cidade de Granada. Reg.: Juan de Udaeta. / VILLA-LOBOS - Estudos 1 a 7 Narciso Yepes (violão).

August 9:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS . Por Turíbio Santos
Bachianas Brasileiras nº 4; Bachianas Brasileiras nº 8; Choros nº 1 Villa-Lobos (violão).
Orquestra da Radiodifusão Francesa. Reg. Heitor Villa-Lobos.

August 12:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Teresa Lima:
GLAZUNOV - Prelúdio e duas mazurkas Op. 25. Stephen Coombs (piano). / VILLA-LOBOS - Estudos para violão 1 a 5. Alexander-Sergei Ramirez (violão). / MEDTNER - Sonata n° 1 em si menor Op. 21. Manoug Parikian (violino). Hamish Milne (piano).

August 13:
07:00 DESPERTE COM OS CLÁSSICOS:
Pjotr Iyich TCHAIKOVSKY - Dumka (Cena Rústica Russa), op. 59. Lang Lang (piano)./ Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Bachianas Brasileiras n° 2. Orquestra Filarmônica Real Britânica. Reg.: Enrique Bátiz. / Jean SIBELIUS - O Cisne de Tuonela. Orquestra de Filadélfia. Reg.: Eugen Ormandy. / Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART - ária "Prigionier che fa ritorno, do oratório "Betulia Liberata", K. 118. Nathalie Stutzmann (contralto). Moscou Virtuosi. Dir.: Vladimir Spivakov. / Hekel TAVARES - Modinha, primeiro movimento do concerto para piano em formas brasileiras. Arnaldo Cohen (piano). Orquestra Sinfônica Petrobrás Pró-Música. Reg.: Roberto Tibiriçá.

August 15:
09:00 O PRAZER DA MÚSICA com Marcelo Jaffè:
50 anos sem Villa Lobos.

August 16:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS Por Turíbio Santos:
Sonata nº 2 para violoncelo e piano; Trio nº 1 em dó menor. Prelúdio nº 14. Tânia Lisboa (violoncelo) e Mirian Braga (piano).
22:00 KALEIDOSCÓPIO com Almeida Prado:
Bruno MANTOVANI - Concerto para Violoncelo e Orquestra. Orquestra Sinfônica da Rádio de Saarbrucken. Reg. Günther Herbig../ Philippe SCHVELLER - Concerto para violoncelo e Orquestra. Orquestra Filarmônica da Rádio França. Reg. Alexander Briger. Jean Guihen (solista). / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Choros nº 10 - Simon Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Schola Cantorum de Caracas. Reg. Eduardo Mata

August 18:
12:00 CONCERTOS DO MEIO-DIA com o Maestro Walter Lourenção:
Terceira Suíte de "Descobrimento do Brasil" de Heitor VILLA-LOBOS pelo maestro Roberto Duarte.

August 19:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Teresa Lima:
VILLA-LOBOS - Capriccio em C maior Op. 49. Marcio Carneiro (violoncelo), Werner Genuit (piano). / Edvard GRIEG - Balada para piano em sol menor Op. 24.

August 20:
21:00 SALA DE CONCERTO:
Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Uirapuru. Orquestra Sinfônica Simon Bolívar da Venezuela. Reg.: Eduardo Mata. / Carlos CHÁVEZ - Suite de Cavalos de Vapor. Orquestra Sinfônica Simon Bolívar da Venezuela. Reg.: Eduardo Mata. / Alberto Ginastera - Estância. Orquestra Sinfônica Simon Bolívar da Venezuela. Reg.: Eduardo Mata. / Silvestre REVUELTAS - La Noche de los Mayas. Orquestra Sinfônica do estado do México. Reg.: Enrique Batiz. / Manuel PONCE - Concierto del sur. Sharon Isbin (violão). Orquestra Filarmônica de Nova York. Reg.: José Serebrier.

August 21:
23:00 NOTURNO:
VILLA-LOBOS - Canção do Amor. Renée Fleming (soprano). Orquestra da Rádio de Msocou. Dir.: Alfred Heller

August 22:
10:00 CIRANDA - Academia Brasileira de Música:
VILLA-LOBOS - Choros 10. Schola Cantorum de Caracas. Orquestra Sinfônica Simon Bolívar da Venzeuela. Reg.: Eduardo mata. / GUERRA PEIXE- Prelúdios Tropicais. Martha Marchena (piano).

August 23:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS . Por Turíbio Santos.
Concerto nº 5 para piano e Orquestra; Sinfonia nº 4. Orquestra da Radiodifusão Francesa. Reg. Heitor Villa-Lobos. Felicia Blumental (piano) Obras do Guia Prático. Orquestra Villa-Lobinhos. Reg. Sergio Barbosa

August 25:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Teresa Lima:
MEDTNER - Sonata n° 2 em sol maior Op. 44. Manoug Parikian (violino). Hamish Milne (violino). / VILLA-LOBOS - Quarteto de cordas n° 6. Quarteto Radamés Gnattali.

August 27:
23:00 NOTURNO:
Francis POULENC - Valsa e Pastoral. Marcelo Bratke (piano). / Sergio BARBOZA - Supite Ugupu. Turíbio Santos (violão). / VILLA-LOBOS - O canto do capadócio. / Berceuse. Rebecca Rust (cello). David Pater (piano).

August 30:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS . Por Turíbio Santos.
Quartetos nº 1 e nº 2. Quarteto Bessler Reis; Sexteto Místico. Quinteto Villa-Lobos e convidados. Valsa da Dor. Arnaldo Estrela (piano)