Tumbling Villa-Lobos RSS

A Villa-Lobos tumblelog, from the guy who brought you the Villa-Lobos Website and the Villa-Lobos Magazine. Focus, Dean, focus! Traduzir para Português

Archive

Feb
3rd
Sun
permalink
From the Music on Stamps blog.  I haven’t seen the Cuban stamp before.  I’ll need to see what kind of instrument a “Tompeta con resonador de calabaza” is, and where Villa used it.
From the Music on Stamps blog.  I haven’t seen the Cuban stamp before.  I’ll need to see what kind of instrument a “Tompeta con resonador de calabaza” is, and where Villa used it.
Feb
2nd
Sat
permalink
In his conducting he bounced along with the beat animatedly and managed to keep the sometimes complicated rhythms clear of each other…. The further afield he goes, the more likely he is to bring back discoveries of true charm and value.
— Paul Bowles on Music, p. 220
Feb
1st
Fri
permalink
Bassoonist Benjamin Coelho’s disc Bravura Bassoon includes a Villa-Lobos piece I’ve never heard, or heard of: it’s called “Corrupio: Bailado.”  I haven’t had a chance to listen to this disc yet, but the first minute of the VL piece, for bassoon and string quartet, is very appealing.  Listen to excerpts from each of the tracks on Amazon.com’s Music Sampler, and buy Bravura Bassoon here.
Bassoonist Benjamin Coelho’s disc Bravura Bassoon includes a Villa-Lobos piece I’ve never heard, or heard of: it’s called “Corrupio: Bailado.”  I haven’t had a chance to listen to this disc yet, but the first minute of the VL piece, for bassoon and string quartet, is very appealing.  Listen to excerpts from each of the tracks on Amazon.com’s Music Sampler, and buy Bravura Bassoon here.
permalink
When in 1936 he was invited to take part in the Congress for Musical Education in Prague, he flew the ocean in the Zeppelin, and at the Congress could hardly speak of anything except the wonders of transoceanic travel by air.
—

Nicholas Slonimsky, “A Visit with Villa-Lobos,” Musical America, October 16, 1941, p. 10

Here’s a poster for regularly scheduled passenger service between Europe and Brazil from Hamburg-Amerika Line, from an excellent online exhibit from Denmark “The Airship is Coming!”

Jan
27th
Sun
permalink
It still reveals things to me — fortunately, there is enough technical and melodic stuff that I can play it repeatedly and not get tired of it.
— Robert Bonfiglio, on the Harmonica Concerto (from an interview in the Louisville Courier-Journal).  Bonfiglio plays the concerto on February 2nd with the Louisville Orchestra.
permalink
The Uirapuru, an Amazonian bird that’s the subject of one of Villa’s great orchestral works.  This picture is from the blog of Olivier Bleys, who wrote a five-part radio play “Le Vert Paradis de Villa-Lobos,” recently broadcast on France Culture.   Click here to hear the song of this “Musician Wren.” You can hear the Symphonic Poem and Ballet Uirapuru performed by the Odense Symphony on a Bridge CD, in a great performance conducted by Eduardo Mata, and in the legendary Stokowski recording from the 1950s.

The Uirapuru, an Amazonian bird that’s the subject of one of Villa’s great orchestral works.  This picture is from the blog of Olivier Bleys, who wrote a five-part radio play “Le Vert Paradis de Villa-Lobos,” recently broadcast on France Culture.   Click here to hear the song of this “Musician Wren.”

You can hear the Symphonic Poem and Ballet Uirapuru performed by the Odense Symphony on a Bridge CD, in a great performance conducted by Eduardo Mata, and in the legendary Stokowski recording from the 1950s.

Jan
25th
Fri
permalink
It’s a tremendously exciting piece with quite a bit of musical worth, although it’s really very bizarre - one episode after another with peaks and valleys. As a whole, it’s quite riveting and deserves to be heard every so often.
— Marc-André Hamelin, on Villa’s Rudepoema.  Hamelin will be performing the work, along with Haydn, Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, and “Sonata in a State of Jazz” by Alexis Weissenberg.
Jan
18th
Fri
permalink
7 Rue Jean Goujon is just off the Champs Elysee, not too far from the Hotel Bedford (7 Rue Arcade), where Villa-Lobos lived when he was in Paris from 1952 to 1959. [By the way, I didn’t live there (I wish!) - I came across this picture on the web using Google’s image search - the website itself wouldn’t load.] 

7 Rue Jean Goujon is just off the Champs Elysee, not too far from the Hotel Bedford (7 Rue Arcade), where Villa-Lobos lived when he was in Paris from 1952 to 1959.

[By the way, I didn’t live there (I wish!) - I came across this picture on the web using Google’s image search - the website itself wouldn’t load.] 

permalink
Villa-Lobos once aroused my envy by showing me his personal collection of native Brazilian percussion instruments. After a visit like that, one asks oneself: how did we ever manage to get along for so long a time with the bare boom of the bass drum and the obvious crash of the cymbals?
— Aaron Copland: Music & Imagination (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures), p. 89

permalink
Villa looks very jaunty in this computer wallpaper picture, from the Classical Composers series.
Villa looks very jaunty in this computer wallpaper picture, from the Classical Composers series.
Jan
17th
Thu
permalink
I missed this excellent review of the Seventh Symphony in the cpo series, by Paul Shoemaker, on the Musicweb site.  Some good bits: “However wild or strange this music sounds, there is always the sense of a brilliant mind in control.” “it takes intense listening to hear the substance in this style and the individuality in these works, and it is worth the effort.” It’s been great spending some time on the Musicweb site - very highly recommended!    More information on the Complete Symphonies series from cpo, coming Real Soon Now. 

I missed this excellent review of the Seventh Symphony in the cpo series, by Paul Shoemaker, on the Musicweb site.  Some good bits:

“However wild or strange this music sounds, there is always the sense of a brilliant mind in control.”

“it takes intense listening to hear the substance in this style and the individuality in these works, and it is worth the effort.”

It’s been great spending some time on the Musicweb site - very highly recommended!   

More information on the Complete Symphonies series from cpo, coming Real Soon Now. 

permalink
Yes, the concerto was played gorgeously by Julius last Sunday on the Radiodiffusion, and Villa Lobos conducted the other half of the program. He says I’m the only young American he considers, etc. I am drunk again with flattery all about.
— Ned Rorem, The Paris Diary & the New York Diary, 1951-1961

Jan
16th
Wed
permalink
I love this poster.  It’s from a concert last October by The Portland Cello Project, which included Bachianas Brasileiras #1.
I love this poster.  It’s from a concert last October by The Portland Cello Project, which included Bachianas Brasileiras #1.
permalink
When I played one of his works for Heitor Villa-Lobos shortly before his death, he made several suggestions which I immediately carried out. Then he said, ‘No, play it the way you feel it, the way you think it should be done.’
— Ruth Slenczynska, Music at your fingertips, Da Capo Press, 1976, p. 102.
Jan
15th
Tue
permalink

Eva Gauthier

“A further highlight in Gauthier’s career took place a few months later, when she performed songs by the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos, at the Festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music in Venice, Italy. Here, Gauthier courageously finished her performance despite opposition from the traditionalist audience, which booed the Villa-Lobos composition. Sixteen years later she remembered that “… the audience on the whole much preferred the music of the old Venetians to the masters of today” (The Musical Record, June 1941).”

— from the Library & Archives Canada Virtual Gramophone site, Canadian soprano Éva Gauthier - New York and Celebrity