SACDs - Villa-Lobos

Gustavo Núñez, principal bassoon with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, is considered one of the best bassoonists of his generation. He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1965.

After playing the violin for several years, he switched to the bassoon at the age of eleven and was first taught by his father.

From the age of sixteen he studied with Kerry Camden at the Royal College of Music. From 1984-1988 he pursued his studies with Klaus Thunemann in his prestigious class in Hannover, Germany. Still a student, Gustavo Núñez was awarded the Prix Suisse at the International Competition in Geneva, and the Carl Maria von Weber Prize in Munich, both in 1987. In 1988 he played with the Darmstadt opera and from 1989 he was principal bassoon with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, where he remained until his Concertgebouw appointment in 1995.

In addition to his work with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Gustavo Núñez teaches at the Robert Schumann Academy of Music in Düsseldorf, Germany.

This is certainly unusual repertoire, of which very few recordings exist, let alone on SACD. The earliest work on this CD is by Boïeldieu, best known as a composer of comic operas. Rodrigo’s Concierto Serenata is dedicated to the great Basque harpist Nicanor Zabaleta. Villa Lobos was a self-taught musician and was able to find his way around most instruments. He stated “Thanks to my experience with the guitar, I was also able to play the harp.”

The subject of the Amazonian forests surfaces in a number of works throughout Villa – Lobos’s output. In Floresta do Amazonas, one of his very last works, Villa-Lobos again focused explicitly on the rain forest, the creatures that live in it, and the myths that have been woven around it. The work has been described as a symphonic poem for soprano, male-voice choir and large orchestra, The songs, Melodia Sentimental in particular, have also become popular as separate concert items. The suite's twenty-three movements have rousing titles such as ‘Forest Fire', ‘Head Hunters' and ‘Dance of the Indians', but also include numbers such as ‘Lullaby' and ‘Twilight'.

The recordings by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra of works by Villa-Lobos, Camargo Guarnieri and other Brazilian composers have demonstrated the variety of their national music and the multi-faceted nature of Brazilian dance.

Alexandre Levy’s Samba and Alberto Nepomuceno’s Batuque are early examples of a Brazilian art music which draws heavily on the dance rhythms of popular music.

Notable latter-day examples are Antônio ‘Tom’ Jobim with his Chegada dos Candangos from 1960 and Edino Krieger’s Passacaglia for the New Millennium.

Roberto Minczuk has previously led the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in acclaimed performances of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras on BIS (BISCD1830/32), and here returns with this colourful collection of dances for symphony orchestra.

An exceptional guitarist pays homage to Latin America’s greatest composer. He documents three important creative phases in the career of this composer, who began as a cellist, taught himself to play the guitar and as Brazil’s musical heart and soul bequeathed more than a thousand works in various shapes and sizes. “A milestone of the guitar discography” (Stuttgarter Zeitung).