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 mentorship bears fruit

Leonard Bernstein: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Suite; Slava!; CBS Music; A Bernstein Birthday Bouquet

Leonard Bernstein: Anniversaries; Fancy Free; Candide Overture; Wonderful Town Overture

These two discs are due to be released on October 5, 2018.

I was just catching my breath after the August 2018 Leonard Bernstein Centennial when two Naxos re-issues, both of them marvellous discs, showed up from Sao Paulo. These are from the Marin Alsop Leonard Bernstein Anniversary box set released by Naxos early in 2018. Alsop, who studied under Bernstein at Tanglewood, conducts her Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) in an exciting and (almost) timely mix of occasional pieces and more substantial works. Naxos provides their usual high production values: vivid sound and interesting and informative documentation.

Thirty years before last month's Centennial bash there was a big celebration at Tanglewood for Bernstein's 70th birthday. The Boston Symphony had commissioned some distinguished composers to write short tributes to Lenny. My favourite is this fun piece by Luciano Berio; it has a cute ending!


These two discs are full of such clever trifles, but there are more substantial works as well. The Candide Overture has become one the Bernstein's most popular works during the Centennial year, and Alsop and her Brazilian players deliver a superb version here. The Fancy Free Suite is full of Broadway moxie and sentimentality, and it translates well here with a very slight samba flair and saudade sadness.

Marin Alsop works with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood. Photo: Walter H. Scott, 1988. Boston Symphony Archives.

All of this music, and the entire Alsop Bernstein project, is really a story of the close relationship between a special mentor and a remarkably astute pupil. It's so exciting to see it bear fruit in these beautifully presented recordings of the Maestro's music.

Sounds of youth with echoes of maturity

Heitor Villa-Lobos: Symphonies 1 and 2

The Villa-Lobos Symphonies series from Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) under Isaac Karabtchevsky comes to a triumphant conclusion with this disc of the composer's first two symphonies. Though Villa-Lobos was a little bit of a late bloomer - his earliest works aren't especially accomplished by the standards set by Mendelssohn or Schubert - there's an interesting situation keeping this release from being anti-climactic. The 2nd Symphony, ostensibly written in the late teens of the 20th century, had to wait until 1944 for its premiere, and the composer seems to have used more than a bit of his best juju in polishing up this piece for its performance. It thus seems to be far in advance of the 1st symphony, and more importantly, the 3rd and even the 4th, as good as that work is. Though it's true that the 2nd Symphony is based on the principles of composition espoused by Vincent d'Indy and there are many French and Russian-sounding bits, one keeps hearing passages that sound like nothing as much as the Bachianas Brasilieras. And that's all to the good, I think.

By the way, there are a few other works from this period where something similar happened. Villa-Lobos wrote "1917" on the score of the marvellous orchestral work Uirapuru, but it wasn't premiered until 1935. Like the 2nd Symphony, it has a suspiciously nationalistic, Bachianas Brasileiras sound, which isn't surprising considering that the composer conducted the premiere in front of President Vargas. And the score of the Sexteto Mistico (one of my favourite chamber works), written in 1917, was lost. Villa-Lobos re-wrote it from memory, but obviously slipped in music in the modernist style he had mastered in Paris in the mid-1920s.

With his 1st Symphony Villa-Lobos was still learning to write music for orchestra, but it's still a more than creditable effort. It has a very fine performance here, partly because of the Sao Paulo musicians, who are very much in a groove with their conductor Isaac Karabtchevsky; and partly because of the carefully revised score which fixes many mistakes and excrescences, and in which Karabtchevsky himself played a major role. This performance makes an even better case for the symphony than the very good CPO recording from Stuttgart conducted by Carl St. Clair.

There are two last things to praise.  The Naxos design team has done a great job with this whole series. They've broken out of the bland Naxos cover tradition with striking black and white photographs. This last disc is one of the best; it features Beach at Nightfall, Rio de Janeiro, 1940, by Thomaz Farkas, the great Hungarian photographer who moved to Brazil as a child. Secondly, Fábio Zanon, who is currently Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, provides another absolutely first-class essay for the liner notes, with strong analysis and new insights. Put together, the Naxos Symphonies notes represent a major contribution to Villa-Lobos scholarship. This last disc in the set will be released on November 10, 2017

This review also appears at The Villa-Lobos Magazine.

Masterpieces revealed

Villa-Lobos Symphonies 8, 9 & 11

Villa-Lobos wrote twelve symphonies, though only eleven of the scores survive, and he wrote them from early in his career (1916) to very late (1957, two years before his death). People have been warning us for a long time not to value Villa-Lobos's symphonies too highly. I know this; I've been one of them. Don't expect too much, was the message, his best works are for the guitar and piano, and in the Choros and the Bachianas Brasileiras series. Now that we're well into the Naxos Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) series, led by Isaac Karabtchevsky, I'm beginning to think this particular piece of conventional wisdom might be wrong. These three symphonies sound familiar, sure, because they sound like Villa-Lobos. But even though I've heard all three a number of times, in the very good CPO series from Carl St. Clair and the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart made around the turn of the last century, the music on the new disc sounds fresh and new and really quite amazing.  This series is forcing all of us to sit up and take notice of a whole big chunk of Villa-Lobos's legendarily large output.

In his really excellent liner notes the guitarist and musicologist Fabio Zanon talks about how Villa's mature symphonies suffered because they were different from people's expectations and because of editorial problems with the scores. Though I hear the odd echo of the Choros from Villa's heyday in Paris in the 1920s, and plenty of call-outs to the Bachianas Brasileiras series of the 1930s and early 40s, the 8th, 9th and 11th Symphonies share something of a reboot feeling for the composer.  Here he finally turns his back, more or less, on modernism, while doing the same, more or less, with the folkloric music that made his worldwide reputation. There's a neo-classical (not neo-baroque) sound that goes along with early classical symphonic structures. Zanon sees and hears both Haydn and Mozart in this music, with Beethoven and Schubert lurking around the edges. Having stripped down his orchestral music to the essentials, we're now more aware than ever of how Villa-Lobos has constructed the music. To be sure this is still music written for large orchestras, but there's no Brazilian percussion component, no prepared pianos or violinophones, and no over-the-top Romantic gestures. The first movement of the 9th Symphony is instructive. Villa zips out three themes in quick succession, gives them a quick run-through in his contrapuntal-light machine, and then, when you expect a fair bit of noodling, he winds things up abruptly, with a typical Villa-Lobos flourish. All done in less than four and a half minutes. I must say that I like the concise Villa-Lobos; it makes a nice change from the often over-blown padding of more than a few of his works. This is vivid, direct, lively music without empty gesticulation. With the varnish of score errors and outdated preconceptions removed, these three symphonies emerge as masterpieces.

A copy of this review is at The Villa-Lobos Magazine. The disc drops on June 9, 2017.

Duelling Prokofievs

There are two complete Prokofiev Symphony series on the go right now: Marin Alsop's on Naxos with the Sao Paulo Symphony (OSESP), and Andrew Litton's on BIS with the Bergen Philharmonic, and a third just finished at the end of 2015, by Kirill Karabits with the Bournemouth Symphony on Onyx. This is music that rewards comparative listening: I can listen for hours to different versions of different symphonies, stopping to compare passages, or just letting the music wash over me. There is a great range in musical styles among the symphonies and miscellaneous orchestral works included on these discs, and even within some of the works themselves. I couldn't listen to this much Shostakovich at once without musical or emotional fatigue. Prokofiev often lightens the moment with an innocent, non-sarcastic motif by the flute, or softens a martial movement with a consoling passage from the strings. He never cloys, and sentimentality seems foreign to him. How many composers can you honestly say this about?

All three of these series have received rave reviews; it's the fine details and one's personal preferences that will help someone decide which one to purchase. Luckily, with nearly ubiquitous streaming services you can pop in and out of all three, or even do some comparisons of your own. Here is Karabits in the grand opening movement of the greatest symphony, no. 6:

And a slightly more expansive reading by Litton:


Alsop's version will be released on August 12, 2016; I'll add the Spotify link here when it's available. Once again, Alsop and the Naxos producer and engineers are taking a best-strings-forward approach, with less of a focus on brass and woodwinds. This results in a softer, more restrained, less acerbic interpretation, which is made clear by listening to the first minute of all three versions (and especially Karabits' witheringly in-your-face beginning, which I found effective in its own way).  There is plenty of power on display from Sao Paulo, though, and Alsop makes sure to highlight Prokofiev's bleakest and harshest passages for maximum poignancy.

When you have orchestras of the calibre of the Bergen, Bournemouth and Sao Paulo ones, and such gifted conductors as Litton, Karabits and Alsop, there are no losers in a competition like this. Only winners: everyone who loves Prokofiev.

A new CD from Sao Paulo

The Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, also known as OSESP, is Brazil's top orchestra, and one that's very highly regarded in the rest of the world. The orchestra records a fair amount on major labels, mainly with Naxos and BIS, but it also makes available a selection of CDs free on its website (the CDs marked Selo Digital OSESP are those you can download.) This is a great place to get a feel for the classical music of Brazil that's not written by Villa-Lobos (and believe me, there's lots of great music from down there!)

The latest CD from the OSESP Chamber Orchestra is really interesting: it's called Tres Concertos Brasileiros, and it includes three works from Brasilian composers: Nailor Azevedo Proveta, Toninho Ferragutti and Vagner Cunha. These composers all have connections with jazz and popular music, but they share a facility in writing for a classical orchestra. Ferragutti, who is an accomplished instrumentalist to go along with his composing and arranging, plays with panache his own instrument in his Fantasia for Accordion and Chamber Orchestra. In his note on the piece in the CD booklet, Ferragutti says the piece was written on the road, as his band toured the North-East of Brazil, Europe and the Southern Brazilian Pampas, all areas where the accordion has an important place in musical culture. Each of those traditions can be traced in this lively and vital work.  

Vagner Cunha's Viola Concerto is in a more classical mode, though jazz and popular elements are there as well. Proveta's Concertino in Choro Form for trumpet, strings and piano, is a standout: it's really gorgeous. This is a larger work which mixes choro and jazz with neo-classical forms, and especially with the orchestral sound of the French impressionists. All of the works on this disc are definitely worth a listen, and the price is right. Sound is excellent, the playing of the soloists strong, and the orchestral forces (under Terje Tonneson, Claudio Cruz and Celso Antunes) acquit themselves very well. This is very highly recommended.

Superb Stravinsky, with a light touch

From February 3, 2015:

After loving the dazzling recordings that Chandos released of Prokofiev and Haydn Piano Concertos with British orchestras, I wondered what the French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet would be up to next. I was so pleased to see the announcement by the same record company of this excellent program of Stravinsky works for piano and orchestra. This was clearly music to which Bavouzet was well suited, and in which he could provide his usual blend of élan, wit and solid musicianship. His light touch might temper the tendency which still exists to take the often stern Stravinsky too seriously. This time Bavouzet would be reunited with the conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier, with whom he recorded a Gramophone Award winning disc of concerted works by Ravel, Debussy and Massenet in 2011. And the two were off in May 2014 to Sao Paulo to record there with Tortelier’s former orchestra.

Up until now I’ve known the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (Osesp, as it’s known in Brazil) exclusively playing music of Brazilian composers, and especially Villa-Lobos. In this repertoire they’ve recorded quite a bit, for BIS and Naxos especially, and they pretty much rule. I’ve heard about their trips to Europe, and the strong notices they’ve received for concerts and recordings in a wide range of repertoire with Yan Pascal Tortelier and their new musical director Marin Alsop. Osesp, which is now the best South American orchestra, seems to be making its way into the top tier of orchestras internationally.

The orchestral players, often equal partners in Stravinsky’s scores, excel in this music as much as the soloist. This is especially true of the wind players, and is most especially evident in the strongest work on the disc, the early 1920s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. In all four works Tortelier keeps everything in balance and in forward motion. He ensures that the broad range of varied textures, from the pianist’s immersion within the densest, loudest orchestral sounds of Petrouchka to the spare, brittle sounds of the serial Movements, always make musical sense. The Chandos engineers are, I’m sure sometimes breathlessly, swept along while providing really excellent, lifelike Super Audio CD sound.

Compelling Villa-Lobos from Sao Paulo

From June 3, 2013:

By the time Villa-Lobos came to write his 3rd and 4th Symphonies in 1919, he already had under his belt two great works for large orchestra: Amazonas and Uirapuru, from the breakthrough year of 1917. As well, he had written a significant body of chamber music composed according to classical and romantic models. This was the period where he was finding his own voice as a composer, and that voice comes out to a large degree in both the 3rd Symphony, subtitled A Guerra, The War, and the 4th, A Vitória, The Victory.

The Naxos Symphonies series with Karabtchevsky conducting OSESP is winning me over to this music even more than the complete CPO series from Stuttgart under Carl St. Clair from a decade ago. This is sophisticated symphonic music, written perhaps under the influence of Russian composers such as Borodin, Rimsky Korsakov and especially Tchaikovsky. Villa-Lobos knew this music inside out from his days as an orchestral musician - he played the cello with the symphony and in the opera pit.

In the end Villa's Symphonies don't measure up to the nine written by the Swede Kurt Atterberg, who was born in the same year as Villa-Lobos. But it's quite interesting to compare Atterberg's 3rd, 4th and 5th Symphonies with Villa's 3rd and 4th. All were written during and just after the First World War, and though I can't imagine either knew the music of the other, there are similar themes and sometimes a common sound-world. It makes the disappearance of Villa's 5th Symphony even more vexing.

When Villa-Lobos himself conducted and recorded his orchestral music with the French National Radio Orchestra in Paris in the 1950s, he chose the 4th Symphony to go with the complete Bachianas Brasileiras and a selection from the Choros series. But he never sold that piece to the orchestra or the phonographic audience, or if he did you can't tell from the thin sound. Karabtchevsky and his Brazililan orchestra sell both of these symphonies, and I look forward to listening to them again. And I definitely look forward to the release of future discs in this series.

No Bach, no folklore, but still Villa-Lobos

From November 27, 2012:

The conventional wisdom concerning the 11 symphonies of Villa-Lobos (one, the 5th, is lost) is not positive. Critics either dismiss these works outright or damn them with faint praise. This is in spite of a fairly strong list of recordings, beginning with two versions of early works conducted by the composer, and coming to a climax in a complete series from the Californian conductor Carl St. Clair for cpo. The latter series (recorded earlier in this century) was fairly well received, but didn't help the symphonies to 'break through' even though Villa-Lobos's stock has risen so much in the past twenty years. I must admit that the symphonies don't feature much even in my own (very significant) Villa-Lobos listening.

So, are these works like the Bachianas Brasileiras with Bach or Brazil taken away? Or are they unfairly neglected masterworks from a genius of orchestration? Brazil's top orchestra, OSESP, and a senior Brazilian conductor, Isaac Karabtchevsky, aim to find out in a brand new project to record this music once again. It's an oddity that until now there have been no Villa-Lobos symphonies recorded by Brazilian orchestras, though we have recordings from Stuttgart, Paris, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Bratislava and Tenerife. We'll see if home advantage can tip the scales.

The first disc is very encouraging, with two works written towards the end of the Second World War. Villa-Lobos was at the peak of his powers when he wrote his 6th (1944) and 7th Symphonies (1945). In those two years he wrote the last two of his great Nationalist series, the Bachianas Brasileiras. As well, he explored more abstract music through his composition of the 8th & 9th String Quartets, the String Trio and the Duo for violin & viola.

I'm impressed with the 6th Symphony especially, and like that Villa-Lobos used 'millimetrization' (translating the contours of mountains into melodies) to build his melodies. George Gershwin used the same technique in some of his music. The 6th, with its craggy lines and shifting harmonies, seems a particularly cogent piece of music, considering Villa-Lobos's reputation for shapelessness and his occasional missteps into banality. This deserves to be Villa's most popular symphony. The 7th isn't as well-balanced or light on its feet, and at nearly 40 minutes goes on a bit long for its material. But OSESP and Karabtchevsky provide strong, idiomatic performances that show that even without Bach or Brazilian folklore, this music sounds only like Villa-Lobos. This music will never come close to the Bachianas, the Choros, or the great tone poems, but it's definitely worth a listen.