A styrofoam sculpture of Villa-Lobos, for Império Serrano’s 2012 Carnaval parade. The photo is © MiChelAngelo BUonaRoti Simoni.
Choros #06 is one of Villa-Lobos’s greatest works. This video features conductor Fabio Mechetti and the Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais, with highlights from rehearsals. I wonder if this work, with its modernist opening, samba rhythms and stirring melodies, might someday become as popular as Choros #10 and the Bachianas Brasileiras series.
Ruth Ann Ritchie and Michael Jones play Bachianas Brasileiras no. 6, from a concert by The Cirrus Quartet in Dallas last March.
“Strong and original in his use of rhythm, he gives to each of his works a colour which in their brightness, and again in their mysterious melancholy, seem to reflect the landscape and the Brazilian soul.”
Stefan Zweig on Villa-Lobos, from Brazil - Land of the Future, p. 162.
In 1937, the 22-year-old composer Hans Joachim Koellreutter fled Nazi Germany with letters of recommendation from Paul Hindemith and conductor Hermann Scherchen.
“When we got off the ship in Rio de Janeiro, I did not have a penny. Absolutely nothing. I only had the letters of recommendation that were addressed to Villa-Lobos. We got a taxi and I couldn’t even speak Portuguese. The only thing I could do was to show the envelope with the name of Heitor Villa-Lobos to the taxi driver. At that time, the world was totally different. It was enough to show a name and the driver knew what to do. He took us directly to Villa-Lobos’s home.”
Hans Joachim Koellreutter: The musical revolutions of a Zen master, by Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta, p. 236-7. Koellreutter is best known for promoting atonal music in Brazil, and for being the teacher of Antonio Carlos Jobim.
A track from the new Melodia Sentimental CD, with guitarist Krzysztof Meisinger, violinist Andrew Haveron, and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by José Maria Florêncio.
Tom Jobim was born in 1927; he was 32 when Villa-Lobos died. Though he idolized the older composer, he never had a chance to meet him. Jobim often talked about how much Villa’s music meant to him. The great digital archive of the Instituto Antonio Carlos Jobim includes a three-page tribute to Villa-Lobos from the Centennial year 1987, which ends:
“O Villa-Lobos é assim meu pai, é meu tudo. Estou com vontade de bo tar uma musica do Villa-Lobos no meu disco. É mais do que uma homenagem, é pro disco ficar mais bonito. Pra eu sentir que tinha alguém que gostava mais de musica do que eu.”
Google Translate garbles this quite badly (and I’d appreciate a proper translation), but I think the gist of it is that Jobim thinks of Villa-Lobos as a father, and that putting a Villa-Lobos song on his record as a tribute would make it better. The Villa-Lobos song he’s referring to, I think, is Modinha (Seresta no. 5) from the 1987 album Tom Jobim inédito, which Danilo Caymmi sings to Jobim’s piano accompaniment (you can listen to the song at the website). Jobim ends his tribute: “To feel that I had someone who loved music more than me.”
This is really impressive: Invocação em Defesa da Pátria, presented on September 7 (Dia da Independência in Brazil), 1999. Isaac Karabtchevsky conducts the Coral Lírico Municipal & Orquestra Sinfonica Municipal, and the soprano is Angelica Feital.
The Villa-Lobos pieces on the programme are the Sexteto mistico and Bachianas Brasileiras #5.
Daniel Mueller plays the 7th Etude of Villa-Lobos. Daniel is bassist of the Brazilian heavy metal group Venus Attack, but he’s a fine classical guitarist as well. More CG from Daniel is here.
Spent a whole day with Villa Lobos. I went to his rehearsal with a chorus of five thousand boys and girls which he conducts through a microphone. He has all kinds of tricks to teach children, and even bawls them out if they are not dressed properly. But he has no children of his own.
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Nicolas Slonimsky, August 30, 1941, letter to Dorothy Adlow
Pianist Andrew Staupe hits the final chord of Villa-Lobos’s Rudepoema with his fist. The picture is by John Behringer, from this review by Tom Aldridge of Staupe’s recent Indianapolis recital.
The composer and conductor Walter Burle Marx (1902-1998) was a great advocate of Villa-Lobos in America. He talks about his friend in the documentary Heitor Villa Lobos: Índio de Casaca, which is available on YouTube.
“Walt Disney is in Rio, and called on Villa-Lobos while I was there. During the conversation it developed that Walt Disney’s favorite record is Ionisation.”
- Nicholas Slonimsky, from a letter to Dorothy Adlow, August 30, 1941.
