Villa Lobos

Heitor Villa-Lobos' two numbered cello concerti come from the opposite ends of his output; the first Grande Concerto dates from 1915 and the second from 1953. In between there is another concertante work, the Fantasia for cello and orchestra, which is contemporaneous with the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 for soprano and eight cellos that remains Villa-Lobos' most popular work. In this MD&G issue, Heitor Villa-Lobos: Concertos for Violoncello and Orchestra, cellist Ulrich Schmid is heard with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie under conductor Dominique Roggen in the numbered concertos only, although there easily would have been enough room on the 42-minute-long disc to accommodate the Fantasia as well.

Eugene Goossens/LSO - Villa-Lobos: The Little Train of The Caipira
Studio Master in 24-Bit/96-kHz | FLAC tracks | Full Scan Covers | MU, RS | 232 MB 3% recovery
1960 | Genre: Classical | Label: Everest | SDBR-3041 | HDTrack hi-res digital download

As an introduction to the music of the Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos, you can't really do better than this little masterwork which is the toccata from his Bachiana Brasileira No. 2. It was inspired by a ride that Villa-Lobos took in 1931 on just such a train that was transporting berry-pickers and farm laborers between villages…

(Jean-Yves Duperron)

Heitor Villa-Lobos is widely recognised as Brazil’s 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 is without a doubt Brazil's most famous composer and one of the great creative personalities of the twentieth century. His oeuvre is gigantic in its dimensions and perhaps can be compared only to that of Darius Milhaud, who, by the way, was a close friend of his. In any case, Villa-Lobos was the first to introduce the music of Latin America to the world's concert halls, and influences from this music do indeed abound in his oeuvre. cpo is now presenting the first complete recording of his colossal symphonic work complex in a boxed set of seven CDs at a special low price! The SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra under the American star conductor Carl St. Clair has taken on this enormous task, and the result can only be described as a bravura achievement. You can look forward to an orchestral tour de force operating on the highest level!

Frank Bungarten has taken on a significant task: an entire album of works by legendary Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. The composer's music is lush, complex, and richly textured, which is not a surprise given that Villa-Lobos was classically trained. But Villa-Lobos also incorporated inspiration from music of native Brazilian peoples and African cultures, so one cannot consider him purely a formal art music composer. Thus it takes a very skilled musician to be able to technically master the music and to convey the emotion and rhythms. Bungarten is perhaps most successful in the first set of works, Suite populaire brésilienne, which is a set of five dances.

The Cello Concerto no.1 was Villa-Lobos’s first major orchestral work. Filled with youthful energy and displaying an eclectic style, it is the sound of the composer finding his voice. Three decades later and with his reputation at its height, the inspired melodies and flowing style of the Fantasia sees Villa-Lobos giving free rein to his vivid imagination. Composed for the Brazilian cellist Aldo Parisot, the no less inventive and lushly scored Cello Concerto no.2 from 1953 suggests man’s solitude when facing the vastness of nature.