Heitor Villa-Lobos - Bachianas Brasileiras Nos. 2, 3 & 4 (Roberto Minczuk)

Information

Composer: Heitor Villa-Lobos

• Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2, for orchestra
• Bachianas Brasileiras No. 3, for piano and orchestra
• Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4, Version for orchestra

Jean Louis Steuerman, piano

São Paulo Symphony Orchestra

Roberto Minczuk, conductor

Date: 2005

Label: BIS

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 8

These performances of Bachianas Brasileiras Nos. 2 and 4 easily are the finest available. The São Paulo Symphony Orchestra certainly ought to know how to play this music, and do they ever! You’ll be amazed at how effortlessly the strings articulate the hellish motor-rhythms in the finale of No. 4, or how the players differentiate the percussion timbres in the “train” movement of No. 2. Even if you know these works well, it’s like hearing them for the first time. In No. 3 for piano and orchestra, not one of the best pieces in the series, conductor Roberto Minczuk shapes a performance quite similar to that on the composer’s own EMI recording, albeit with infinitely greater sound and much, much better playing.

Jean Louis Steuerman, a pianist whose limited discography (mostly for Philips) usually excites little enthusiasm, is a decent soloist, if perhaps at times a trifle heavy-handed in the faster music. But it’s not really his fault: the music does meander a bit, albeit amiably. Sonically this is stunning in terms of dynamic range and timbral splendor, but I question the excessive prominence of the percussion at the climax of the chorale (third movement) of No. 4, where the crashing tam-tam and bass drum overwhelm the tune in the brass. It’s an odd and atypical miscalculation (most performances err in the opposite direction) in what otherwise is a very impressive effort by all concerned.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

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Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 – November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, and classical guitarist. 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 2,000 works by his death in 1959. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, and is well represented on the world's recital and concert stages and on compact disc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heitor_Villa-Lobos

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Roberto Minczuk (born April 23, 1967) is a Brazilian conductor. Of Belarusian and Polish descent, he was born in São Paulo and studied at the Escola Municipal de Música. In 1981 he went to the United States to study at the Juilliard School, graduating in 1987. In 1984 he debuted as a conductor of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra. Minczuk held positions as associate artistic director and associate conductor of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, of the Ribeirão Preto Symphony and titular conductor of the University of Brasília Symphony Orchestra. He is made music director of the New Mexico Philharmonic in 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Minczuk

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