Audrey Hepburn & Anthony Perkins starred in the 1959 MGM film Green Mansions. Villa-Lobos provided a score, but not too much of his music made it into the film. Luckily, we have Forest of the Amazon, a suite Villa-Lobos made from the music.
From the Museu Villa-Lobos in Rio, the first page of the score to the orchestral version of New York Skyline Melody, from 1939.
He earned a lot of money, and spent a lot too. He lived luxuriously, he was quite generous.
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Rémi Jacobs has lots of interesting things to say about Villa-Lobos the man & the composer in this interview. He rightly emphasizes the importance of Villa’s contract with Max Eschig in Paris, which was due to the advocacy of Arthur Rubinstein and Vera Janacópulos.
Villa-Lobos
Ciranda das sete notas (Round of the Seven Notes),
for bassoon and string orchestraFrank Morelli, bassoon
Orpheus Chamber OrchestraThis charming 1933 concertino by Heitor Villa-Lobos is too seldom heard. A genre-crossing, folk-tinged fantasia on the C major scale, it remains a staple of the modern bassoon repertoire and is heard here in a frequently recommended recording.
At a 2010 performance in San Francisco, conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas famously knocked the soloist’s music off his stand on accident during the poignant closing moments of the piece—thankfully, the piece continued uninterrupted.
(photo by Darwin Bell)
(via natmcfearless)
Down there in Brazil nobody knows what they are racially. I met the foremost Brazilian composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos. He’s not real black complexioned, but who knows what. His ancestry is African, Portuguese, and Indian. Brazilians recognize racial strains, but not like in the United States. Here it’s clearly racism, but down in South America, they didn’t have an official policy of racism against blacks.
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Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser, To be or not to bop; Memoirs, Doubleday, 1979, p. 429.
A caricature of the pianeiro Sinhô, by Nássara. This is from the excellent essay “Brazilian Piano Styles”, by Jovino Santos Neto. It’s an overview of the piano in popular Brazilian music from the 1820s to today.
A page from the minute-book of the Uruguayan Guitar Centre, October 25, 1940. The distinctive hand-writing of two famous visitors: Heitor Villa-Lobos & Andres Segovia. The great Uruguayan guitarist Abel Carlevaro helped to arrange these visits; he later premiered some of the Preludes in Montevideo.
Cool photo which I haven’t seen before. In this photo from August 30, 1931, the composer is third from the left in the small group in front of the large crowd. This is from Avaré, one of the stops in the Excursão Artistica Villa-Lobos, the tour of rural Sao Paulo that Villa-Lobos took with a group of distinguished Brazilian musicians. I’ve always thought of the tour stops as small towns, but this looks like a pretty major event.
This is from a story on the 80th anniversary of the event by Gesiel Junior, a historian of the region.
In a concert from earlier this summer, Brazilian pianist Paulo Brasil plays Villa-Lobos & Chopin.
Heitor Villa-Lobos: As Tres Marias No. 1 Alnitah
As Tres Marias pieces from Villa-Lobos are by no means, hard or dark sounding, the virtuosity of piano playing it takes to master the high-speed, delicate fluttering sound is exhausting and takes great control. The three movements are named after the stars in the Orion nebula, beautiful ideas in 1939. Sonia Rubinsky has such a gentle touch and ruthless velocity—a pure white sound.
Nelson Freire at his home. In her blog post at Brasilianos.org, Ana Clara Brant talks with Freire about his new Decca CD Brasileiro: Villa-Lobos & Friends, which is winning rave reviews.
Eight cellists playing for an audience and a very distinguished guest at the 2012 Polar Music Prize award ceremony.
