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September 21, 2009
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This week’s production of Villa-Lobos’s opera A Menina das Nuvens in Belo Horizonte is one of the most important events this year. I hope pictures, reviews, and perhaps even video turn up on the web soon!
September 19, 2009
∞The big-league orchestras and conductors should be playing this work. It’s massive, grown-up, intelligent fun.Paul Ingram, on Villa-Lobos’s 10th Symphony, in his Fanfare review of the Harmonia Mundi recording (July-August 2004, p. 215)
Assobio a Jato - The Jet Whistle - has become one of Villa-Lobos’s most frequently performed works. The Adagio movement is performed by Mihkel Peäske, flute and Leho Karin, cello.
September 18, 2009
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The Orquestra Filarmônica da UFPR is based at the Federal University of Paraná in Curitiba, Paraná. Their musical director is the composer & professor Harry Crowl.
This concert features the rarely played Sinfonietta #1, which is dedicated to Mozart.
Thanks to the Audições Brasileiras blog for this.
September 15, 2009
∞Arrau’s technique is considered to be phenomenal. Villa-Lobos, the Brazilian composer, wrote a fantastically difficult piano work called ‘Rudepoema,’ which he dedicated to Artur Rubinstein. The first time Arrau saw it he played it at first sight. When Villa-Lobos heard of it, he said: ‘I will simply have to write something harder.’
From a story in The Canberra Times, 21 June, 1947, p. 4. I’ve never connected Claudio Arrau with Villa-Lobos; I don’t believe he recorded any VL pieces. I saw him play with the Edmonton Symphony in the early 1970s.
Looking at the score of Rudepoema, I would seriously question how well any pianist could sight-read this music.
The easiest way to familiarize oneself with the esthetics of [Bachianas Brasileiras #4] would probably be by reading the novels of Jorge Amado, since many of Villa-Lobos’s works from the 1930s and 1940s approach the moods and human types of Amado’s novels.Eero Tarasti, Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Life and Works, p. 205. The orchestral version of BB#4 does make a great background for Amado. Lee Boyd’s theory was that Dona Flor & Her Two Husbands is about Villa-Lobos’s complicated personal life.
September 14, 2009
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The French scholar Anaïs Fléchet from the Sorbonne published her book Villa-Lobos à Paris : Un écho musical du Brésil in 2004. She’s in Rio de Janeiro right now, and will give a lecture on Villa’s time in Paris tonight. This is ahead of the series O Ciclo Paris de Villa-Lobos coming this November.
It’s Villa-Lobos’s turn again to be BBC Radio3’s Composer of the Week. Monday’s first episode is really excellent; you can listen to each of these five programmes with Donald Macleod for 7 days after the first performance.
Unfortunately, only UK users can download the Composer of the Week podcast.
September 11, 2009
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A concert at the Bibliothèque nationale du Royaume de Maroc. I love libraries & I love Villa-Lobos, so this is right up my alley!
September 10, 2009
∞It is a whole orchestra advancing, crawling heavily, breaking branches, knocking down trees and tonalities and treatises of composition.Mário de Andrade talks about Amazonas (quoted in Gerard Behague’s article “Indianism in Latin American Art-Music Composition of the 1920s to 1940s”, Latin American Music Review, Volume 27, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2006).
The “Villa-Lobos Funds” - Villa’s huge collection of popular Brazilian songs, poems, and musical memorabilia from the early 1900s. Documentation of the music of Pixinguinha, Donga, and Pernambuco was transmitted through Mário de Andrade to its present home in the Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros of the University of São Paulo.
September 9, 2009
∞Fred Sturm plays Ciranda #13, “A Procura de uma Agulha”, from an August 2009 concert in Albuquerque. His CD Brazilian Soul is highly recommended.
September 8, 2009
∞He is a Rabelais of the new music with a laughter that is generous, rude, and gusty.The Concert Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to Symphonic Music, by Robert Bagar & Louis Biancolli, 1947, p. 789.
Elizabeth Powell’s new Lyrita disc of French & Brazilian piano music includes some really interesting works by Poulenc, Francisco Mignone, and Frutuoso Vianna, along with a well-chosen selection of Villa-Lobos’s piano works.
September 3, 2009
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Heitor Villa-Lobos bebê from the Museu Villa-Lobos website’s Illustrated Chronology - great pictures!
