Villa Lobos

HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1887, has, by virtue of both his immense output and colourful and accessible musical language, become the most celebrated Brazilian composer of all time. His work not only richly typifies the diverse and kaleidoscopic Brazilian scene but also, in its abundance, originality, and vitality, provided the key which unlocked Brazilian art music once and for all from the shackles of European late-Romanticism..

Two Brazilian artists pay tribute to Villa-Lobos and the Amazon rainforest… Sebastião Salgado is a world-renowned photographer who has been working since the 1990s to protect and restore the Atlantic forest and water resources of the Rio Doce valley in Brazil. The Italian-Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes is passionate about the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and his symphonic poem Floresta do Amazonas, for which she created a suite for large orchestra and soprano. Together they travel the world to present an exhibition of Salgado's photographs, combined with concerts conducted by Simone in which the photographs are projected, the photographer having associated each musical phrase with one of his images… The music of this monumental project has been recorded with the Philharmonia Zürich and soprano Camila Provenzale. Ten photos by Salgado, each more striking than the last, are included in the booklet that accompanies this recording, which is completed by another tribute to Amazonian nature, by Philip Glass, with an extract from his Aguas da Amazonia.

The music of Heitor Villa-Lobos is known for its characteristic nationalism, driving rhythms, and original instrumentation. He was trained as an autodidact opposed to academic instruction, his music grew in a completely independent and individual fashion.

This album is a delicious offering from one of the most underrated guitar maestros of all time. Not only does he capture the Samba-inspired passion of Villa-Lobos music (unlike Rodrigo, Villa-Lobos was an accomplished guitarist in his own right), but interprets it in a way that commands and maintains the attention.

Heitor Villa-Lobos is widely recognised as Brazils most important composer, whose style reflects his country and his era: rooted in 20-th century European modernism, he developed his own unique style, blending all colours, smells and sounds of his homeland into his rich, exuberant and vibrant music. Villa-Lobos wrote an immense oeuvre. An important place hold his guitar works, the perfect instrument to present his own style, fusing Latin-American folk-inspired elements with more learned European forms, like Etudes and Preludes. The complete guitar works of Villa Lobos, played by one of the best classical guitarists of today, Frédéric Zigante.

Heitor Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro. His father, Raul, was a wealthy, educated man of Spanish extraction, a librarian, an amateur astronomer and musician. In Villa-Lobos's early childhood, Brazil underwent a period of social revolution and modernisation, abolishing slavery in 1888 and overthrowing the Empire of Brazil in 1889. The changes in Brazil were reflected in its musical life: previously European music had been the dominant influence, and the courses at the Conservatório de Música were grounded in traditional counterpoint and harmony. Villa-Lobos underwent very little of this formal training…
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