Anders Miolin

Anders Miolin here expresses the universality of Christmas by selecting festive songs from across the world and creating fantasies on them.

Here he uses songs from Russia and Poland, as well as Scotland, Mexico and his native Sweden. In his adaptations he employs a wide variety of styles.

He also includes two of his own compositions: Azure Christmas is a memory of a Christmas he celebrated on Martinique, while Stellæ nocte hibernali somniantes (‘Winter Night Dreaming Stars’) catches the experience of ‘standing in the snow looking up at the clear winter sky, with all its twinkling stars dreaming on our behalf’.

On a number of acclaimed discs, Anders Miolin has recorded his own arrangements of music by composers such as Ravel, Debussy and Granados, performing them on a 10-string guitar. Together with the Swiss luthier Ermanno Chiavi he has now developed an instrument with 13 strings, which he uses on this recording.

The life and music of Villa-Lobos is intimately linked with the emergence of Brazil as a nation and cultural force during the first half of the 20th century. This applies especially to the two great cycles that he composed between 1920 and 1945: the 12 Choros and the 9 Bachianas Brasileiras. In the Choros the composer’s stated aim was to achieve a synthesis of the various musical influences of Brazil: the popular urban music (such as the dances of European origin performed by chorões or street musicians), the music brought from Africa by slaves, and the chants and rhythms of the native Indian tribes. The Choros range from solo pieces with durations of a couple of minutes to large-scale scores for expanded symphony orchestra, sometimes comprising choir or solo instruments.

This collection also includes a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet of Quinteto em forma de choros (a work often mentioned in connection with the Choros even if it does not form part of the cycle) as well as a separate disc containing Anders Miolin’s recording of the complete music for solo guitar, much of which Villa-Lobos composed for the legendary Andres Segovia.

“The Brazilian players sound as if the music is in their blood … and their ensemble is in no way inferior to that of any of their rivals” (Gramophone) and “a world-class ensemble providing an assured blend of lush colours, pulsating rhythms and supple phrasing” (International Record Review).