Sunday, June 29, 2008

Villa-Lobos on Cultura FM: July 2008

Here are Villa-Lobos performances upcoming on Cultura FM from Sao Paulo. Listen here on the Internet. Times are local Sao Paulo times, one hour ahead of EST.

July 2, 2008:
22:00 OSESP - Gravações Realizadas na Sala São Paulo:
VILLA-LOBOS - Alvorada na Floresta Tropical. / TCHAIKOVSKY - Concerto n° 1 para piano em si bemol menor, Op. 23. Olga Kern (piano). / BEETHOVEN - Sinfonia n° 3 em mi bemol maior, Op. 55 - Heróica. Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo. Reg.: John Neschling.


July 7, 2008:
15:00 TARDE CULTURA - Música e Notícia com Fabio Malavoglia:
Entre outras obras, destaque para o Quinteto para sopros, op. 91 n° 3, de Antoine REICHA, a Sinfonia n° 11, de VILLA-LOBOS e o Quinteto para cordas em fá maior, de BRUCKNER.


July 8, 2008:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Kika Leoi:
Frédéric CHOPIN - Scherzo nº 4 em mi maior Op. 54. Nikolai Demidenko (piano). / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Estudo nº 9. Joaquim Freire (violão). / Jean SIBELIUS - Serenata nº 2 em sol menor Op. 69b. Ida Haendel (violino). Orquestra Sinfônica de Bournemouth. Reg.: Paavo Berglund. / Clara SCHUMANN - "Romance: andante non troppo con grazia" do Concerto para piano e orquestra em lá menor Op. 7. Enrica Ciccarelli (piano). Orquestra Filarmônica de Montpellier Languedoc - Roussillon. Reg.: Friedemann Layer.


July 12, 2008:
10:00 CIRANDA - Academia Brasileira de Música:
Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Uirapuru. Orquestra Sinfônica da Paraíba. Dir.: Eleazar de Cravalho./ Lorenzo FERNANDEZ - Prelúdios do crepúsculo. Miguel Proença (piano).

13:00 DELICATESSEN com Kika Leói:
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART - Sonata para piano KV. 333. Clara Sverner (piano). / Antonio VIVALDI - Concerto em ré maior RV. 121. I Musici. / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - "Lento" do Quinteto instrumental para harpa trio de cordas e flauta. Grupo Instrumental de Paris.


July 13, 2008:
10:00 ENCONTRO COM O MAESTRO com João Mauricio Galindo:
O maestro Roberto Duarte e Villa-Lobos.


July 14, 2008:
21:00 ENCONTRO COM O MAESTRO com João Maurício Galindo: Reapresentação de Domingo: O maestro Roberto Duarte e Villa-Lobos


July 16, 2008:
12:00 CONCERTOS DO MEIO-DIA com o Maestro Walter Lourenção.
CHOPIN - As Folhas estão Caindo, das canções op. 74. Elisabeth Söderström (soprano). Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano). / MOLTER - Concerto n° 2 para trompete e cordas. Wynton Marsalis (trompete). Orquestra de Câmara Inglesa. Dir.: Raymond Leppard./ BERLIOZ - Abertura "O Carnaval Romano", op. 9. Orquestra Nacional Escocesa. Reg.: Sir Alexander Gibson. / MOZART - Concerto para violino n° 3 em sol maior, k. 216.FranK Peter Zimmermann (violino). Orquestra de Câmara de Wurttenburg. Dir.: Jörg Faerber. / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Sinfonia "Ameríndia". Nmon Ford-Livene, Carlo Scibelli, Carla wood, sociedade Coral de Santa Bárbara, Coro de Câmara UCSB, o Donald Brinegar Singers e a Orquestra Sinfônica de Santa Bárbara. Regência de Gisèle- Bem-Dor.


July 23, 2008:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Kika Leoi.
Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Cinco prelúdios para violão. Narciso Yepes (violão). / Carl Maria Von WEBER - Introdução, Tema e Variações Op. Póstumo. Jon Manasse (clarinete). Samuel Sanders (piano). Quarteto de Cordas Manhattan. / John FIELD - Noturno No.4 em lá maior. Noel Lee (piano). / Jean SIBELIUS - "Allegretto" da Sinfonia No.2 em ré maior Op.43. Orquestra Philharmonia. Reg.: Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

New Villa-Lobos Re-Issue


I was pleased to see Naxos beginning to look to historic recordings of Villa-Lobos music in their Classical Archives. The disc above, Joseph Battista's 1953 recording of the Cirandas for MGM, showed up today in the great Naxos Music Library. I'm looking forward to listening to this carefully in the near future.

I've seen the LP on eBay in the past, but never expected it to show up on CD. I know that Naxos has been praised for their restoration work, and I look forward to a relatively positive sonic experience when I get the CD. The pieces I've heard so far sound fine with my (library's) "Near CD" bitrate on NML.

Joseph Battista is an American pianist and scholar who was born in Philadelphia in 1918, and who died in 1968. There's a page on the Latin American Music Center's website about Battista and the Cirandas disc, and more about his life at this Joseph Battista Memorial Fund page.

It's nice to have this CD issued in time for the 40th Anniversary of Battista's untimely death.

A postscript: if you're not a Naxos Music Library subscriber, get on down to www.naxosmusiclibrary.com. Or ask your public library if they have a subscription for their library members to use. Every Villa-Lobos lover should have access to this great resource. Just in the past two weeks there have been four or five new VL CDs added.

Another postscript: the disc has shown up on the Naxos download site Classics Online. $3.99 will buy you the entire disc in 320 bits per second MP3 files - a real bargain!

Monday, June 16, 2008

Bachianas Brasileiras in Concert

I recently commented on how popular Bachianas Brasileiras #6 has become in live performance, based on my database of Villa-Lobos Concerts. How does it stack up against the other 8 in the series?

Here are the numbers:
It's not a surprise that BB#5 is by far the most popular, and the above list probably under-estimates how often this piece is performed around the world. I don't always pick up every performance, especially in arrangements for voice and guitar (the composer's own, by the way), or for many other combinations of instruments.

BB#4 is in second place, partly because it's programmed as a solo piano work as well as an increasingly popular orchestral piece. Next is BB#9, which has recently become fashionable in its choral version as well as the version for strings. Cellists love BB#1, and there's a spill-over effect, since if you have 8 cellists performing BB#5, you might want to keep them busy in the same concert. BB#2 has the famous "Little Train" movement, so it's next, at 19 performances.

BB#6 follows that work; bassoonists love it. BB#3 used to be the rarest in performance, but it's been taken up by Sonia Rubinsky and others, and so it actually has become the most commonly performed VL work for piano and orchestra. #7 and #8 round out the list. I'm surprised by the relative rarity of #7, which I think is one of Villa's best orchestral works. Not so much with #8, though if you listen closely to a really good performance, it has the merits of many less-often-performed musical works in famous series (much like Beethoven's 8th Symphony).

There it is; Villa's signature series, from the more-or-less comprehensive list of world-wide concerts from 1999-2009.




And speaking of the Bachianas Brasileiras series, I missed this programme when it was on BBC Radio 3 a year ago, but here are the recommendations for these works from the CD Review programme of June 30, 2007:

Building a Library Recommendations

VILLA-LOBOS Bachianas Brasileiras

Villa-Lobos

Reviewer: Catherine Bott

Nos. 1, 2, 5 & 9:
Victoria de los Angeles (soprano), French Radio National Orchestra, Heitor Villa-Lobos (conductor)
(recorded 1956-8)
EMI CLASSICS 5669122 (CD, mid-price)

Nos. 1 & 5:
Juliane Banse (soprano), The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic
(recorded 2000; from CD entitled 'South American Getaway')
EMI CLASSICS 5569812 (CD)

Nos. 2, 3 & 4
Jean Louis Steuerman (piano), Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Roberto Minczuk (conductor)
(recorded 2002)
BIS CD-1250 (CD)

Nos. 7, 8 & 9
Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra and Choir, Roberto Minczuk (conductor)
(recorded 2003)
BIS CD-1400 (CD)

Complete - Nos. 1-9:
Rosana Lamosa (soprano), Jose Feghali (piano), Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Kenneth Schermerhorn, Andrew Mogrelia (conductors)
(recorded 2004-5)
NAXOS 8557460/2 (3-CD, budget)

Friday, June 13, 2008

Todas as Ondas do Rádio




This 2000 CD "Todas as Ondas do Rádio", performed by the Coro de Câmara Villa-Lobos, is fascinating. Learn more, including purchase information, at the MUBI website.

The concept is really interesting: a chamber choir performs on a Brazilian radio station in the 1940s. You can listen to some clips on the MUBI site. The Our Sponsors jingle and This Reporter are both reminiscent of Villa's music-for-the-masses works of the period. Villa's in charge in this cool picture:


Even though I can't understand what's being said, this is still really cool stuff. It reminds me a lot of listening to Latin American radio on shortwave when I was a kid.

You can still hear interesting Brazilian music, and radionovelas, on shortwave today. Rádio Nacional da Amazônia is fairly easy to hear in North America, evenings on 11,780 kHz. You can listen online, but it's more atmospheric, and more fun, on shortwave.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Villa-Lobos on Cultura FM: June 2008

Here are Villa-Lobos performances upcoming on Cultura FM from Sao Paulo. Listen here on the Internet. Times are local Sao Paulo times, one hour ahead of EST.

The highlight of the month is on June 28 (my birthday), when the featured work on the excellent Ciranda programme is Gil Jardim's new recording of the Nonetto.

June 10, 2008:
06:00 A ESCRITA DE CÂMARA - Solistas e pequenas formações:
Luigi NONO - Fragmentos. Silencio. A Diotima para quarteto de cordas. Quarteto La Salle. Walter Levin (violino). Henry Meyer (violino). Peter Kamnitzer(viola). Lee Fiser(viloncelo). / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS. Choros N°10. Orquestra Sinfonia da Venezuela. Dir. Simon Bolívar.

June 16, 2008:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Kika Leoi:
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART - "Allegro" do Concerto para violino n° 3 em sol maior, K 216. Frank Peter Zimmermann (violino). Orquestra Filarmônica de Berlim. Reg.: Wolfgang Sawallisch. / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - "Tímido - poco andante" da Suíte para cordas. I Musici. Reg.: Yuli Turovsky. / Frédéric CHOPIN - Noturno em si bemol menor Op. 9 n° 1. Yundi Li (piano). / Edvard GRIEG - Abertura No Outono Op. 11. Orquestra Sinfônica Iceland. Reg.: Petri Sakari.


20:00 AS MIL e UMA INTERPRETAÇÕES com Turíbio Santos:
Edvard GRIEG. Suite Holberg. Heitor VILLA-LOBOS. Bachianas número 3. Orquestra de Câmara Banespa. Claudio Cruz (Spala)

June 21, 2008:
10:00 CIRANDA - Academia Brasileira de Música:
CARLOS GOMES - Condor. Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira. Dir.: Yeruham Scharovsky. Francisco BRAGA - Trio. Trio Brasileiro./ VILLA-LOBOS - Bachianas Brasileiras no. 4. Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo.OSESP. Dir.: John Neschling.


June 28, 2008:
10:00 CIRANDA - Academia Brasileira de Música:
Camargo GUARNIERI - Suite Vila Rica. Orquestra Sinfónica do Estado de São Paulo. OSESP. Dir.: John Neschling. / VILLA-LOBOS - Noneto. Toninho Carrasqueira (flauta). Luís CArlos Justi (oboé). Sérgio Burgani (clarinete). Aloysio Fagerlande (fagote). Dílson Florêncio (saxofone). Maria Elisa Risardo (celesta). Paulo Braga (piano). Elizabeth Del Grande (tímpanos). Ricardo Bologna e Eduardo Gianesella (percussão). Coro Misto. Dir.: Gil Jardim. André / MEHMARI - Sete Miniaturas. Quinteto de Sopros Villa-Lobos.