Friday, October 31, 2008

Villa-Lobos on Cultura FM: November 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.

November 1:
10:00 CIRANDA - Academia Brasileira de Música:
Heitor VILLA-LOBOS /Mario de Andrade - Suíte para voz e violino. Jill Gomez (soprano). Peter Manning (violino). / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Amazonas. Orquestra Sinfônica Símon Bolívar da Venezuela. Dir.: Enrique Arturo Diemecke. Suíte floral, op. 97. Anna Stella Schic (piano).

November 3:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Kika Leoi:
James DEMARS - Concerto para piano e orquestra. Caio Pagano (piano). Orquestra Sinfônica Nacional Checa. Reg.: Paul Freeman. / Ernesto NAZARETH - Tupinambá Ameno Resendá. Pedro Amorin (bandolim). Maria Teresa Madeira (piano). / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Saudades da minha vida, Modinha e Na paz do outono. Cláudia Riccitelli (soprano). Nahim Marun (piano).

November 5:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Kika Leoi:
Francesco Saverio GEMINIANI - Sonata I para violoncelo e baixo contínuo. Gaetano Nasillo e Tobias Bonz (violoncelo). Jesper Christensen (cravo). / Cristofaro CARESANA - La Vittoria dell'Infante. Roberto Invernizzi e Roberta Andalò (soprano). Daniela Del Mônaco (contralto). Giuseppe De Vittorio e Rosario Totaro (tenor). Furio Zanasi (baixo). / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Bachianas Brasileiras No.2. Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo. Reg.: Roberto Minczuk.

15:00 TARDE CULTURA - Música e Notícia com Sérgio Roberto Ribeiro:
Entre outras obras, destaque para o Quarteto de cordas em mi bemol maior de Felix MENDELSSOHN, a transcrição pra piano de Liszt para a abertura "Jubileu" de Carl Maria von WEBER, e as Bachianas Brasileiras n° 7 de Heitor VILLA-LOBOS.

November 10:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Kika Leoi:
Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Trio No.1 em dó menor para violino, violoncelo e piano. Yang Zhang (violino). Miriam Braga (piano). Tânia Lisboa (violoncelo). / Arturo MÁRQUEZ - Danzón No.4. Orquestra De Las Américas. Reg.:Benjamin Juárez Echenique. / Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART - Ballet No.32 K367 Chacona. Coral e Orquestra Sinfônica da Radio Bávara. Reg.: Sir Collin Davis.

November 15:
10:00 CIRANDA - Academia Brasileira de Música:
Henrique de CURITIBA - Três episódios. Norton Morozowicz (flauta). Henrique Morozowicz (piano)./ Alceo BOCCHINO - Suíte Miniatura de Ballet. Orquestra Sinfônica do Paraná. Dir.: Roberto Duarte. / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Introdução ao Choros para orquestra e violão. Timo Korhonen (violão). Orquestra Sinfônica da Rádio Finlandesa. Dir.: Sakari Oramo.

November 18:
07:00 DESPERTE COM OS CLÁSSICOS:
Johann Sebastin BACH/ BUSONI - Prelúdio e Fuga em ré maior, BWV 532. Emil Gilels (piano)/ Antonio VIVALDI - Concerto em lá maior, RV 552, "Per ecco lontano". Christophe Coin (violoncelo). Il Giardino Armonico. Dir.: Giovanni Antonini/ Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Prelúdio n° 1. Yves Storms (violão).

November 19:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Kika Leoi.
Mario CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO - Sonata Op.77 (omaggio a Bocherini). Susanne Mebes (violão). / Balys DVARIONNAS - By the Lake. Orquestra de Câmara da Lituânia. Dir.: David Geringas. / Heitor VILLA LOBOS - Evocação. Cláudia Riccitelli (soprano). Nahim Marun (piano).

November 21:
15:00 TARDE CULTURA - Música e Notícia com Sérgio Roberto Ribeiro:
Entre outras obras, Choros n° 9 de Heitor VILLA-LOBOS, Quinteto com clarinete em si menor opus 115 de Johannes BRAHMS e Sinfonia em Sol menor de Alberto NEPOMUCENO.

November 22:
08:00 QUATRO ESTAÇÕES - A Música Ocidental em Épocas e Estilos:
O BARROCO: Johann Jakob Froberger, compositor alemão - Suíte XXX em lá menor. Pedro Persone (cravo)./ O CLASSICISMO: Franz Joseph Haydn - Quarteto de cordas em ré maior n°4, opus 20. Movimentos: Allegro di molto, Un poco adagio e affetuoso, Menuetto alla zingarese-trio, presto e scherzando. Quarteto Melos-Stuttgart. / O ROMANTISMO: Robert Schumann - Träumerei. (Devaneio). Leonard Hokanson (piano). / O SÉCULO XX: Heitor Villa-Lobos - Momoprecoce. Magda Tagliaferro (piano). Orquestra Nacional da Rádio Francesa. Reg.: Heitor Villa-Lobos. (Repeated on November 29 at 08:00)

November 27:
15:00 TARDE CULTURA - Música e Notícia com Sérgio Roberto Ribeiro:
Entre outras obras, As três Maria de Heitor VILLA-LOBOS, Sonata n° 2 para trompa e cordas de Luigi CHERUBINI e com Ballada para piano e orquestra opus 19 De Gabriel FAURE.

Aldo Parisot interview

I came across this 2001 interview with Aldo Parisot, the great Brazilian cellist, on the International Cello Society website.

Parisot, of course, commissioned the second Villa-Lobos cello concerto in 1954:

"My manager suggested that I ask Villa-Lobos to write a concerto for me, which I would play in my debut with the New York Philharmonic. I wrote a letter to Villa-Lobos and he agreed to do it. In 1954 he came to New York and requested that I spend a week with him so that he could get an idea of how I played. So I'd go to his hotel and he'd ask me to play anything -- scales, etudes, sonatas,concertos, etc. Then he'd write a phrase and ask me to play it. If he didn't like how I played it, he would take the cello and demonstrate what he wanted. He was a cellist, after all, and he earned a living playing in a trio in a restaurant in Brazil. He was also a wonderful guitarist and could improvise on it for hours. Interestingly, while we worked together, he sat on the table with two scores, one was the cello concerto and one was a symphony, which he was working on at the same time.

"Almost always sitting silently in the background each morning was guitarist André Segovia, who was a close friend of Villa-Lobos. Villa-Lobos and Segovia would tell jokes to each other in Portuguese, usually dirty. I often thought that the only reason Segovia came was for the lunches. Villa-Lobos' wife, Arminda, would make feijoada for us, a very popular Brazilian dish, which he would devour."

October 31, 2008: The original picture I posted (from a Stock Image library) is apparently not really Feijoada. See the comments below (and thanks to the commentor!)



So, here's the new picture, from Wikipedia:



Feijoada is an important Brazilian dish [pictured above]. I read once about Villa-Lobos writing a "Fugue Without End" on the theme of Feijoada, but I can't track down the reference. I can see the appeal for Villa-Lobos: he loved life, which includes good food and good wine, along with snooker, flying kites, playing with kids and listening to all kinds of popular and erudite music. People often comment on how the mix of ingredients in Feijoada is like the mix of diverse peoples making up Brazil. That's something Villa-Lobos would probably have agreed with as well.

Update: Found it! This is from John & Matt Lewis Thorne's "Serious Pig: An American Cook in Search of His Roots," p. 313

"Brasileiros traditionally eat the meal for Sunday lunch, leaving the rest of the afternoon free to sleep it off. Heitor Villa-Lobos composed a four-part fugue in honor of feijoada, each part representing one basic element of the dish. One is tempted to suspect that the piece, entitled "Fugue without End," was never finished because somnolence overcame the composer before he could gather together the completing measures."

Here's Elsie Houston's recipe for Feijoada, from Robert's Basement.

Here's another October 31, 2008 update: by an amazing coincidence, just when I was updating this post, I was listening to Sonia Rubinsky's new CD (vol. 7) from her Complete Villa-Lobos Piano Music series on Naxos, and came across the little piece entitled Feijoada sem perigo. Here is an explanation of this piece, from the liner notes by James Melo:

Finally, the extremely condensed gem Feijoada Sem Perigo seems to capture Villa-Lobos in the very moment of creation. In its brevity it manages to express the very essence of a musical thought, primeval and unaltered by further elaboration. The piece was dedicated to Dora Vasconcellos, the Brazilian consul in New York at the time, and the author of a few poems that Villa-Lobos set to music. Villa-Lobos dedicated the piece to Dora Vasconcellos to thank her for an invitation to partake of the quintessential Brazilian dish at her home in New York.
FINALLY, November 13, 2008: So, here's the proper Brazilian feijoada, with ingredients from the Wikipedia article:

Friday, October 24, 2008

Choros #10 at the Festival Villa-Lobos 2007

The 2008 Festival Villa-Lobos is just around the corner. So it's nice to see this YouTube post of an important concert from last year's festival: Choros #10 performed by the famous Sinfónica de la Juventud Venezolana Simón Bolivar under the direction of the great conductor Isaac Karabtchevsky. Here's the first part:



and the second:



Wow! These guys are good! (and great singing as well).

Top Scores

Here are the most popular Villa-Lobos scores from sheetmusicplus.com.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Bank notes

When the Bank of England announced that 150-anniversary-guy Sir Edward Elgar was being replaced on the £20 note by Adam Smith, there was some negative reaction. When I was in London last week, I came across a few Elgar notes, but they'll be history soon.

Here's Villa on the 500 cruzados note from Brazil:

and the other side:


This note is no longer legal tender, but I'm sure there's no slight intended to Villa-Lobos in this. The cruzado was replaced by the cruzado novo in 1989, and then replaced by the cruzeiro in 1990, the cruzeiro real in 1993, and that's when I stopped reading the Wikipedia articles....

Sunday, October 5, 2008

New Villa-Lobos Book

Thanks to Borris Mayer for this tip: a new book in German on Villa-Lobos.

Heitor Villa-Lobos und der Aufbruch der brasilianischen Musik

Negwer coverManuel Negwer, Heitor Villa-Lobos und der Aufbruch der brasilianischen Musik, Mainz: Schott Music, 2008.

The book, which also includes a CD, is available from JPC online and Amazon.de

Friday, October 3, 2008

Marsalis Brasilianos Tour Begins

The first concert of the Marsalis Brasilianos tour was last night in Eugene OR. Here's a review from the Mainly Music Meanderings blog. It's interesting that Marsalis and the Brazilians (the Philarmonia Brasileira and their conductor Gil Jardim) didn't connect until the day of the concert. Looks like that only enhanced the music. Villa-Lobos's music comes from the informal, improvisational world of the choroes, and that seems to be the style aimed for in this concert tour. Thanks to Dan for this up-to-date information - great blog, by the way.

He points out that the published programme was changed - rather than the Suite for Strings (a very early work, from 1912), they've chosen one of Villa's great works: Bachianas Brasileiras #9. That will provide some gravitas for the second half of the show.