São Paulo's Villa-Lobos recording revolution

Heitor Villa-Lobos: Guitar Concerto, Harmonica Concerto, Sexteto Místico, Quinteto Instrumental

In the past ten years we've been blessed with a new generation of Villa-Lobos recordings from São Paulo that have instantly become the new standards for interpretation, instrumental playing and engineering. These include the complete Bachianas Brasileiras, Choros and Symphonies series. Now we have a very welcome disc in Naxos's new series The Music of Brazil, which takes on the first of the composer's commissioned concertos from the last decade of his life, along with some important chamber works.

The Guitar Concerto, written for Andrès Segovia in 1951, is somewhat controversial. Jason Vieaux, speaking for the Defence, has expressed his love for the work. Meanwhile, John Williams said, "it just isn't a very good piece, technically or musically." This has always been a popular work, thanks to a plethora of great recordings, by Julian Bream, Göran Söllscher, and my own favourite, by Norbert Kraft. There's even a very convincing recording by John Williams himself! But I'll admit that, at least in its final movement, the Guitar Concerto, like much of the commissioned music from Villa's final decade, suffers from some undistinguished patches of banal passage-work, though in this case they connect some of the composer's finest tunes. Lovely tunes were never a problem for this guy! I've only listened to this new recording of the Concerto by Manuel Barrueco and OSESP (the São Paulo Symphony) under Giancarlo Guerrero, five or six times, but I'm already suspecting this will go to the very top of the list. Barrueco's playing is outstanding, especially in the Cadenza, and even in the Finale the partnership between soloist and orchestra makes the most compelling case for bringing this work out of the John Williams cold.

Eero Tarasti refers to Villa-Lobos's "limpid late period". The Harmonica Concerto, written for John Sebastian in 1955, partakes fully of the relaxed, late-night noodlings that are seemingly built-in to the instrument. Beginning with a theme that's disconcertingly similar to the Hancock's Half-Hour theme-song by Wally Stott/Angela Morley, Villa-Lobos continues his formula here: lots of arresting, sometimes quite beautiful, themes held together with characteristic runs and doodles by the solo instrument. In this case, as so often throughout his career, Villa-Lobos cottons on to a wider variety of effects from his instruments than are standard, providing a kaleidoscopic effect of instrumental orchestral colours. The playing here by José Staneck is very fine, though this recording lacks some of the energy of the classic album by Robert Bonfiglio and the New York Chamber Symphony under Gerard Schwarz.

As fine as these two works are, I was most interested in the two chamber works, by the OSESP Ensemble, made up of some very fine musicians indeed. The Sesteto Místico (aka Sextuor Mystique) was nominally written in 1917, though it was revised later in Villa's career. This is a fine example of Villa's modernist style, well ahead of anything being written in Latin America, and close to the leading edge in Europe. Tarasti refers to its "contrapuntal colorism... a refined, aquarelle-like texture simply because of the choice of instruments." He notes that "a corresponding combination is not to be found in European chamber music of the period." This is a very fine recording, with delicate filigree effects and all the colours of the rainbow.

We return to the 1950s with the Quinteto Instrumental, written in 1957. This is a work of pure nostalgia, though it's French nostalgie rather than the usual Brazilian saudade, with Villa-Lobos looking back to his time in Paris in the 1920s. The sounds of the instruments evoke Ravel, as does the mildly ironic and sentimental tone of the music. If there is a falling-off in Villa-Lobos's inspiration in the commissioned works of the 1950s, it's hard to hear it in the great chamber works of the period, including the late String Quartets and this Quintet. And it's a great work to end this very, very fine disc from São Paulo. I look forward to more in this series!





This disc will be released on November 8, 2019. This review also appears at The Villa-Lobos Magazine.

A weighty symphony from Nashville

From January 9, 2014:

Roberto Sierra's Sinfonia no. 4 is part of the great Germanic symphonic tradition, as the composer himself states in his liner notes for this new Naxos CD. But even more so, I think, it follows the lead of great Latin American composers like Carlos Chavez, who wrote six symphonies, and Villa-Lobos, who wrote eleven, while never sounding like Brahms or Mahler. Alberto Ginastera comes to mind as well, though he wrote only Symphonic Movements and Estudios Sinfonicos, and not named Symphonies. Like these masters, Sierra's music is more rhapsodic; it evolves organically, rather than dialectically. This Symphony remains serious and vital music, and it's presented in a thoughtful manner by Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony. The rhythmic variety of Sierra's music serves a structural purpose, and is not only there to provide coloristic, "Latin" effects. It seems sometimes Bachian, in the manner of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras.



Sierra took 18th Century music as the starting-off point for his Fandangos, making reference to Antonio Soler, Domenico Scarlatti and Luigi Boccherini, all of whom worked in Spain. This is lively music designed to show off the virtuoso capabilities of an orchestra. The Nashville musicians come through with flying colours, as they so often have in their Naxos recordings in the past decade.

Carnaval makes reference to Schumann's 'characteristic' piano pieces, but these miniatures of distilled character also bring to mind short, pointed, contrasting pieces from Latin America, such as the Prole do Bebe by Villa-Lobos, Camargo Guarnieri's Ponteios, or the suites and dances of Ernesto Lecuona.

Giancarlo Guerreo is having an outstanding time as Music Director of the Nashville Symphony, building it into one of America's finest orchestras, in live performance as well as on disc. This disc is another example of how important Nashville has become in classical as well as so many other kinds of music.

A winner from Naxos American Classics

From August 19, 2011:

The American composer Joseph Schwantner has been called a "gifted orchestral colorist". That might be considered faint praise, with an implication of superficiality. But I don't believe that true mastery of orchestral colour can be achieved without delicacy, depth and drive. I'd rather think of the great masters of orchestral color - Debussy or Villa-Lobos, for example - as being colorists in the same sense that Titian was a great colorist of painting. That's raising the bar pretty high, of course, and the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements of the music need at least to be along for the ride (as they always are for Debussy, and usually are for Villa-Lobos).

Judged even by these criteria, though, I would call Schwantner's Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (1994) a major success. I knew the concerto in its arrangement by Andrew Boysen for Percussion and Concert Band, on two different recordings from Calgary & West Texas. This new Naxos CD has the major advantage of having a full orchestra; Schwantner is working here with a full palette. And not just any orchestra - the Nashville Symphony is in fine form under the direction of Giancarlo Guerrero. Christopher Lamb, who commissioned the work, provides an incredible range of sounds from his large battery of instruments. This is a major masterpiece of the last decade of the 20th century.

Of the two other pieces on the disc, both World Premiere recordings, I was most impressed with Morning's Embrace, an evocative naturescape. Schwantner, like a few other American composers, is able to write music inspired by nature that stays out of the well-worn grooves of the English pastoral tradition and "New Age" kitsch. This is music with interesting "sound environments" (Schwantner's own words) that have a strong underlying musical logic. I was less taken, though, by Chasing Light..., though the work's appeal might just take longer to get through. I'll certainly be listening to this CD more often than most other discs of new music. Another winner from Naxos American Classics.

A Piazzolla grab-bag, but beautifully played

From October 29, 2010:

The Nashville Symphony Orchestra really showed their stuff in Latin American repertoire with their highly-regarded Naxos recording of the complete Bachianas Brasileiras of Villa-Lobos in 2000 (conducted by the late Kenneth Schermerhorn). This new Naxos disc brings this strong tradition to the most important orchestral works of Astor Piazzolla, under the direction of Nashville's dynamic Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero.

The Sinfonia Buenos Aires was written under the influence of Piazzolla's teacher Alberto Ginastera. Though this rather episodic work doesn't share Ginastera's formal mastery, it's a sprawling, colourful symphonic work (or rather, three symphonic movements). The Concerto for Bandoneon is, I think, more successful. It may, in fact, be Piazzolla's best orchestral work, partly because it's scored for strings and percussion only.

The final work on the disc is Las Cuatro Estaciones Portenas (Four Seasons of Buenos Aires), in a version for violin and orchestra made by Leonid Desyatnikov after Piazzolla's death. Though I'm not a complete musical purist - I love Charlie Parker's sessions with strings, for example - I'm not a fan of this particular pastiche. Piazzolla's nuevo tango style is itself a melding of traditional tango, Baroque, and jazz styles, so it's natural to experiment with new orchestrations. But I much prefer this music in a bandoneon-led small group. That said this version is very well played indeed, with Tianwa Yang providing some hair-raising turns on her violin.

Thomas May's thoughtful liner notes include a wealth of pertinent information about Piazzolla's life and music. This is just one of the areas in which Naxos excels. The label has raised the art and business of classical music to a very high level, especially considering the state of today's musical commerce.

Mythic music with bells and whistles

From October 30, 2009:

All I knew of the Metropolis Symphony by Michael Daugherty was that it was written in 1988 as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Superman's first appearance in comics. So I began with Daugherty's liner notes: "The symphony is a rigorously structured non-programmatic work, expressing the energies, ambiguities, paradoxes, and wit of American popular culture." To test this I put down the notes, plugged in to my iPod, and went for a 42-1/2 minute walk in the rain. My findings from the first listen? Energies? Check! Ambiguities, paradoxes? Check! Wit? Check!

Maybe, though, Daugherty saved some of the wit for the sentence I quoted above, for as mythic as this music is, it's still programmatic. The second movement, for example, is a representation of the trickster MXYZPTLK (the second in music history if you count Bruckner's 7th Symphony, which I don't). The imp's multi-dimensional nature is mirrored in the aural spaces Daugherty creates. That's a much more sophisticated programme than Carl Stalling's Looney Tunes scores (or Beethoven's Scene at the Brook), but it's a programme nevertheless.

A non-musical aside: Daugherty assumes that the Superman myth is particularly American, though all Canadians know that Superman was first drawn by Torontonian Joe Shuster. Clark Kent's first job was with the Metropolis Daily Star, whose name was taken from the Toronto Daily Star where Shuster worked, and the Metropolis skyline was modelled after that of Toronto. Perhaps Superman is American, but Clark Kent is Canadian. Obvious, eh?

The other work on the disc, Deus ex Machina, is shorter but more profound, and more in line with Fire & Blood, which I reviewed last month. Both works make reference to the visual arts: Fire & Blood to Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo, and Deus ex Machina to the Italian Futurists. Daugherty's three train pictures in the form of a piano concerto are in the honourable tradition of Honegger and Villa-Lobos, and will probably bear more repetition than the Symphony. The Naxos disc shows off the splendid Nashville Symphony, who shone in their 2005 recording of the Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras (also for Naxos), music as rhythmically complex, if not always as boisterous, as this. The orchestral and solo playing (by pianist Terrence Wilson) is excellent. Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero seems to have everything in hand, and Naxos has engineered and packaged another winner here.