Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 3 for piano and orchestra

Villa-Lobos's colourful and immediately ear-catching music is full of the rhythms and sounds of Brazil. The haunting soprano theme of the fifth Bachianas Brasileiras is one of the best-known melodies of all time, and the carnival atmosphere at the end of Momoprecóce is suffused with Brazilian sunshine.

Villa-Lobos was one of the most prolific of all 20th-century composers. The works on this seventh volume of the complete piano works show the multilayered nature of Villa-Lobos’s idiom, which is as exuberant as the Brazilian landscape that inspired him so often.

Amazonas, subtitled ‘Brazilian Indian ballet’, is based on indigenous themes that were embedded in the texture, and innovatively varied and transformed through sophisticated harmonic and rhythmic experiments. Even today Amazonas remains startling for its adventurous musical language.

Several of the shorter pieces on this disc exist only in manuscript, and receive here their world première recording.

Heitor Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro on 5 March, 1887 and died there on 17 November, 1959. He is possibly the best-known classical composer born in South America. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas brasileiras ("Brazilian Bach-pieces"), issued here complete. The nine suites that make up the Bachianas brasileiras were composed between 1930 and 1945.

The most well-known of these pieces are the famous Ària from No.5 and the Tocata from No.2 (entitled 'The Little Train of Caipira') – a wonderful musical depiction of a locomotive in motion.

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).