Classical Music Buzz > The Villa-Lobos Magazine
The Villa-Lobos Magazine
Dean Frey
News about Heitor Villa-Lobos on the web and in the Real World.
Blogging Villa-Lobos since October 2001.
463 Entries

It's great to have a CD available of a Villa-Lobos work that's only had a single recording: a 1954 RCA Victor LP of the 1932 orchestral work Caixinha de Boas Festas (The Surprise Box).  This is thanks to Klassic Haus Restorations. I received a pre-production copy in the mail today, and was very pleased with the quality of the restoration.  I had a banged-up copy of the LP, and even with the nostalgia factored in, the pops & clicks got in the way of my enjoyment of this very fun piece. Now you can buy the CD (which also includes de Falla's Homenajes which was on Side B of the LP, along with Albeniz's Iberia from a 1952 Decca LP) at a very low price, and download 320 kbps MP3s at an even lower price. This is highly recommended.

A significant portion of Villa-Lobos's music concerns the world of children. This is an excellent example, with its quotations of children's songs from the Guia pratico. Like the Saudade da Juventude, this work would fit nicely in a Symphonic Pops program, though there's enough interest in Villa-Lobos nowadays that it would be popular on any symphonic stage.

Here's more about the piece.  Thanks to Harold Lewis for his translation:
In the text of a radio talk given in August 1975, Walter Burle Marx recalled (Presença de Villa Lobos no. 10) that Villa-Lobos had offered to produce a piece for one of the young persons' concerts he (Burle Marx) was organising. Two days before the concert, in November 1932, he visited Villa-Lobos in his little apartment in the centre of Rio. The composer had just finished dinner and was clearing the table.

"Villa-Lobos," he inquired, "how far have you got with the work you've promised?"
"I'll work on it tonight, and should finish it at 4 a.m."
"And the parts?"
"I'll do them myself and some friends are coming to help me later."
"Then I'll let you get on with it and not disturb you."
"You're not disturbing me at all," said Villa-Lobos, insisting that Burle Marx stayed. After sorting the manuscripts on the table, Villa-Lobos went on working on the orchestration while talking to his visitor. At the same time, in another room of the apartment, the pianist Jose Brandão was playing the transcription of the symphonic poem 'Amazonas', and from time to time, Villa-Lobos, hearing something that wasn't right, called out to Brandao, "No, no, it's G flat in the bass," and so forth.

The fact was that next day at 9 a.m., the young musicians received the score of the Caixinha de Boas Festas, with all the parts written out.
10 months ago | |
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This score is from the New York Philharmonic Digital Archive - it's the marked-up version of Saudade da Juventude (Memories of Youth) that Andre Kostelanetz used in a Carnegie Hall concert on November 2, 1957. Though it's called "1st Suite" in the score, there isn't a 2nd or 3rd. This happens so often with Villa-Lobos!  The piece sounds like a really interesting one: arrangements of children's songs from the Guia pratico.
For some reason there's been very little interest in this piece since the late 1950s. I found a reference to an OSESP performance conducted by Eleazar de Carvalho that was shown on TVCultura in 2011, but no other performances since the 50s. It seems like this would be a popular Pops Concert item, especially with the addition of a Narrator reading the words of the original songs, as happened at Carnegie Hall.  After a while one gets tired of Peter & the Wolf and The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. And it should be fairly easy to put on, since the parts are available for hire from Schirmer.


Pops programmers: let's do this!
Internet Bonus: The Little Brown Kitten seems like a great YouTube item: it could go viral!
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Chef Ivo Faria (left) has created a meal inspired by the music of Villa-Lobos at the Vecchio Sogno restaurant in Belo Horizonte. This meal will be presented at two concerts at the Grande Hotel São Pedro on July 7, and the Grande Hotel Campos do Jordão on July 14.

The first course, "Darne de peixe sobre moquequinha de abóbora e molho de cupuaçu", is matched with Uirapuru, the 1917 ballet which is one of Villa's great early orchestral works. Google Translate isn't too much help with this dish, though it involves both a fish sauce and pumpkin.

The main course is "Envelope de galinha caipira à caipora sobre cremoso aipim", a dish of country chicken on a bed of creamy yucca. This is matched with the great piano work Choros #05, "Alma Brasileira". For some reason Google Translate insists on calling it "unlucky country chicken"; I guess the chicken is by definition unlucky.

Next comes "Teclado de costelinha de porco em baixa temperatura à moda sertaneja", slow-cooked pork ribs from the hinterland. To go with this: the "Little Train" movement from Bachianas Brasileiras #2.

For dessert: "Infinita doçura"- "infinite sweetness" to go with Villa's most beautiful work: the Aria from Bachianas Brasileiras #5.

All of the dishes in the dinner are matched by Chef Faria with the wines of Concha y Toro.

Villa-Lobos loved the good things in life: music, wine, a good cigar, and good food. It's great to see it all come together in this project.
10 months ago | |
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Cristina Ortiz plays the piano and John Neschling conducts OSESP in Choros #11. What an amazing piece!
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Villa-Lobos (second from the left in the back row) stands next to the Uruguayan guitarist Abel Carlevaro, in a photo taken in Petropolis, Brazil, on December 12th, 1943. Carlevaro had premiered the Preludes for Guitar in Montevideo the previous year. Villa's wife Armindha is seated in the front row, 4th from the left.
This is from an excellent Spanish-language web-page which includes an interview with Carlevaro about his relationship with Villa-Lobos.
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The Suite for Voice & Violin is one of Villa-Lobos's most important modernist works, written during his Paris stay in 1923. "That this proved a vintage year for him was attributable more to a sense of liberation than to the cultural shot-in-the-arm provided by the French capital." - Wilfred Mellers, Singing in the Wilderness, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001, p. 85.

Featured in this performance from The Playground Ensemble are soprano Megan Buness and violinist Sarah Johnson. The 2nd & 3rd movements are posted on YouTube as well.
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This is one of my favourite tracks from the jazz album A Viagem de Villa-Lobos, from Projeto B.
11 months ago | |
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The Quintette Instrumental is one of my favourite chamber works of Villa-Lobos. It's a late work (written in 1957) for flute, harp & strings that's very reminiscent of the Ravel/Debussy inspired music of the 1920s. This version features the Dolce Duo and friends, from the Escola de Musica de Brasilia. All three movements are up on YouTube.
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The concerts database at The Villa-Lobos Website goes back more than 10 years. I try to include every important concert I come across. Every once in a while I report on the relative popularity of certain works. Here's the latest on Villa's Bachianas Brasileiras:
No surprise that #5 comes out on top, with 342 concerts. Probably half of the performances are of the Aria alone. As well, I think more than half are either in the arrangements Villa-Lobos himself made for voice & guitar or for voice & piano, or in another of the many versions for flute or cello, guitar ensemble, or accordion.

Next, with 218 is #4, with more performances of the piano version than the orchestral one. Lately I'm seeing more orchestras (especially youth orchestras) playing only the first movement.

A significant subset of #2 concerts include only the Little Train movement - either in the original scoring or jazz or MPB versions. This shows up so often that one can think of it as a National Song.

BB#9 includes mainly the version for strings, though the choral version has become more popular in the past few years.

BB#1 is fairly common, with 79 performances. When 8 cellos are rounded up to perform #5, the first Bachianas Brasileiras is often included in the program. As well, there seem to be more cello ensembles out there, and this is one of the most important works for "an orchestra of cellos." I just wish more would play the other rare works that Villa wrote for the orchestral combination he helped to invent.

With only two performers required for #6, there are quite a few concerts out there. There aren't too many works from other composers for flute & bassoon.

BB#7 is one of my favourite works, and I'm quite surprised there are only 30 concerts in total. I'm actually surprised in the opposite way that there are as many as 24 performances of BB#3, which is a big, sprawling piano concerto. And BB#8 brings up the rear with only 16 performances; it deserves more!
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The 43rd Festival Internacional de Inverno de Campos do Jordão begins on July 1st, and this year's festival includes 10 concerts with pieces by Villa-Lobos. Included are concerts by Quarteto Radamés Gnatalli, the Brazilian Guitar Quartet, the Aulus Trio, Claudio Cruz & Antonio Meneses, the Quarteto de Cordas da Cidade de São Paulo, Marcelo Bratke & Camerata Brasil, and Quarteto OSESP. Important orchestral works include Uirapuru and Bachianas Brasileiras #7.
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