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Friday, April 20, 2018

Heitor Villa-Lobos - Discovery of Brazil (Roberto Duarte)


Information

Composer: Heitor Villa-Lobos
  • (01-02) Descobrimento do Brasil, Suite No. 1
  • (03-05) Descobrimento do Brasil, Suite No. 2
  • (06-08) Descobrimento do Brasil, Suite No. 3
  • (09-10) Descobrimento do Brasil, Suite No. 4

Adam Blažo, baritone
Slovak Philharmonic Choir
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
Roberto Duarte, conductor

Date: 1994
Label: Marco Polo
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.223551

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Review

It has taken a very long time for The Discovery of Brazil, one of Villa-Lobos's most significant works, to reach the record catalogue. The original score—which incorporated orchestrations of three earlier pieces—was intended for a 1937 nationalist film, which however used only a fraction of it: the composer then expanded his version into the present four suites (totalling ten items), of which he conducted the first performance in Paris in 1952. (Lisa Peppercorn's book on Villa-Lobos seems to be 20 years adrift on this point.)

Predictably picturesque and colourful in nature, the work depicts the journey of the caravels, with the varied feelings of the aristocrats and seamen on board, the arrival in the strange new continent, and the celebration, amid friendly Indian spectators, of the first Mass in Brazil on May 1st, 1500. For this, Villa-Lobos had recourse to a very large orchestra and a great diversity of styles—Indian chants, popular Portuguese dances and saudades, Andalusian rhythms and Moorish melodic contours (since Spaniards and Moors may have been among the crew), plainchant, the Ave verum and Tantum ergo. Though something of a gallimaufry of moods and idioms (unified slightly by the recurrence in different guises of the passionate initial theme), taken as a whole it achieves a certain epic quality, as the composer intended: what it lacks in homogeneity is counterbalanced by the sheer exuberance of invention.

The Fourth Suite, in which the orchestra is joined by the chorus, is the most substantial, and the finale the most musically impressive, with some remarkable counterpoint; but the elaborate intertwining of Indian elements and the liturgical would have been more effective with more secure intonation from the chorus, especially the sopranos. Except for occasional anxieties in the very highest register of the violins, the orchestra rises splendidly to the whole score.

-- Lionel Salter, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.223551&languageid=EN
https://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Brazil-Suites-1-4-Villa-Lobos/dp/B00000460S

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Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 – November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known South American composer of all time. A prolific composer, he wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2000 works by his death in 1959. 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 Bachian-pieces).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heitor_Villa-Lobos

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Roberto Duarte (born 26 December 1941 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian conductor, pianist, and musicologist. Duarte became well-known primarily after winning the 1975 Serge Koussevitzky International Conducting Competition. Since then, he has conducted dozens of orchestras in Brazil and Europe, including the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, and the Slovak Symphony Orchestra, the latter with which he has released several recordings. Most of the music Duarte chooses to conduct is by Heitor Villa-Lobos and other prominent Brazilian composers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Duarte

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