Villa-Lobos: Chôros No. 1 for guitar

The guitar works of Villa-Lobos form only a small part of the composer’s overall output of more than a thousand works, but they show the three main sources of his inspiration: the luxuriance of his native Brazil; the music of Bach; and the European avant-garde, in which he had immersed himself in the Paris of the 1920s, with friends including Varèse, Picasso and many others.

"A listener would be hard pressed to find a more immediately likeable 71 minutes of music on CD. It is made even more appealing by Norbert Kraft, who seems to cast a perfect light on every small gem. He dazzles not only with his sure and steady technique, but also with the uncanny perception he shows in capturing the essence of each of the pieces on this highly desirable CD. The recorded sound is close and intimate, with just the right amount of warmth, and the low asking price makes this release a true bargain."

- Schwann Inside (Rad Bennett) May 2001

Heitor Villa-Lobos is widely recognised as Brazil’s most important composer, whose style reflects his country and his era: rooted in 20-th century European modernism, he developed his own unique style, blending all colours, smells and sounds of his homeland into his rich, exuberant and vibrant music. Villa-Lobos wrote an immense oeuvre. An important place hold his guitar works, the perfect instrument to present his own style, fusing Latin-American folk-inspired elements with more “learned” European forms, like Etudes and Preludes. The complete guitar works of Villa Lobos, played by one of the best classical guitarists of today, Frédéric Zigante.

Villa-Lobos is perhaps best known for his large scale and exotic orchestral works, but he had a passion for the guitar that went back to his youth, and on which he was a masterful performer. Listeners who know the large orchestral works such as Choros Nos.9 and 12 will be surprised that this group of works – Choros, (which numbered 14 in all, and are all based on Brazilian folk music) started with a work for solo guitar – no.1 is included on CD2 of this set. His output for guitar is slim, but of good quality, and it suffers little from the weaknesses that are apparent in his 12 symphonies, or the 5 piano concertos. When he is at his most improvisatory, and free from formal structures and ‘classical’ restraints he is at his best, and the music has a fresh and spontaneous feel. Villa-Lobos saw a connection between the music of Bach and the music of his native country, and he explored this in his series of works ‘Bachianas brasileiras’.

The 12 Etudes from 1928 were written for Segovia.

HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of an intellectual who taught him to play the cello. After his death the young Heitor learned to play the guitar, an instrument associated with the lower ranks of society. In 1906 he embarked on a legendary trip to the North of his country; he travelled across the coast as far as Manaus, in the Amazon, meeting the humble people and intuitively absorbing their habits and rich musical folklore; later in his life he would exaggerate facts from this trip, inspired by the scientific expeditions that were taking place at the same time. Back to Rio in 1910, he married a pianist and tried (unsuccessfully) to catch up with his musical education as a ‘serious’ composer, while working as a free-lance musician, playing at the opera house at night and in cafes during the day. His earliest known guitar works, which now comprise the Suite populaire brésilienne, belong to this period.

Villa-Lobos was already in his thirties when he was ‘discovered’ by the pianist Artur Rubinstein, then a frequent visitor to South America. He added many of the Brazilian's pieces to his repertoire and prepared the ground for his first trip to Europe. Sponsored by magnates, Villa-Lobos lived in Paris from 1923 to 1930, where, through his natural charisma, he became one of the most respected composers, a friend of the major artists of the time and a darling of the press. Encouraged by the good reception to his exoticism, he felt liberated from the petit-bourgeois taste that had informed his earlier work and created an enormous number of experimental pieces. Around 1929, at one stroke he revolutionized the history of the guitar with the composition of the 12 Études.

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).

After a highly acclaimed 3-disc traversal of Villa-Lobos’ 9 Bachianas Brasileiras, the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) takes on the Choros by the same composer, in a cycle supervised by the orchestra’s artistic director John Neschling. In the Choros, composed between 1920 and 1929, Villa-Lobos’ point of departure is the Brazilian popular genre called choro, and he described his Choros as a synthesis of ‘the different modalities of indigenous and popular Brazilian music’, adding that the word ‘serenade’ gives an approximate idea of what Choros is. This vagueness was probably intentional – Villa-Lobos wanted to catch the improvisatory aspect of the genre, and as a result the works are very varied. The cycle includes brief solo pieces, chamber settings and full-length works for large symphony orchestra, with or without solo instruments or choir, as exemplified by the first volume of this series, released in February 2008. This received a Diapason d’or in the French magazine Diapason, and a review that described the performance of No.7 – for seven players – ‘a lesson in agogic freedom’ and the monumental No.11 – for piano and orchestra – ’a master-piece that opens up onto an almost infinite acoustic universe’, applauding the ’extraordinary interpretation’ by Cristina Ortiz and the orchestra. Volume 2 includes the first of the Choros, for solo guitar, as well as No.4 for three horns & trombone, but also three large-scale orchestral works, adding further facets to this fascinating and kaleidoscopic cycle.