Heitor Villa-Lobos - Choros Nos. 2, 3, 10 & 12 (John Neschling)

Information

Composer: Heitor Villa-Lobos

1. Introduction to the Choros, for guitar and orchestra
2. Two Choros (bis), for violin and cello: I. Moderé
3. Two Choros (bis), for violin and cello: II. Lent - Moins - Lent
4. Choros No. 2, for flute and clarinet
5. Choros No. 3 'Pica-Pau', for male choir and wind instruments
6. Choros No. 10 'Rasga o Coração', for orchestra and mixed choir
7. Choros No. 12, for orchestra

Fabio Zanon, guitar

São Paulo Symphony & Orchestra

John Neschling, conductor

Date: 2008

Label: BIS

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Review

A rousing chôros of approval for Neschling and his São Paulo players

John Neschling has no equal in this repertoire and it’s fortunate for us that he completed his cycle of Villa-Lobos’s Chôros before a reportedly unhappy split with the São Paulo SO earlier this year. Neschling has often rescued Villa-Lobos from himself, looking benevolently at his elephantine orchestration, thinning and rebalancing where necessary, to reveal the 12-part Chôros as the unheralded imaginative leap they were. But evidently not much can be done about his gaudy lapses of taste.

As an example: compare Chôros No 3 with No 10. The earlier work, for male voices and wind instruments, is anchored around a breezy melodic hook that in a different context might have been a showstopper. In comparison, No 10 feels ludicrously overcooked, especially in the closing minutes as a choir evokes Red Indian chanting with all the subtlety of a John Wayne film. The work is meant to portray the primitive world and the information overload of competing orchestral strata in its opening moments is invigorating: in the same piece, Villa-Lobos slides from elevated invention towards banality – Neschling makes it hang together, and the kinetic vivacity of the orchestral playing is mesmerising.

Two chamber Chôros – one for violin and cello, another for flute and clarinet – testify to the brilliance of Villa-Lobos’s counterpoint when he wasn’t trying to be overly fancy. Introduction to the Chôros, too, is delightful because there’s no compositional grandstanding. The 40-minute Chôros No 12 is bigger-than-life, and a mess as it buckles under the weight of clashing styles and schizoid mood-changes. But it’s a sonic spectacle: with Villa-Lobos you quickly learn to take the rough with the smooth.

-- Philip Clark, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 10 / SOUND QUALITY: 10

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/feb/05/villa-lobos

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classRev/2011/Jan11/Villa-Lobos_Coros_BISCD1440_BISCD1450_BISCD1520.htm

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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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John Neschling (born May 13 1947, Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian conductor. He studied under Hans Swarowsky and Reinhold Schmid in Vienna, and under Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa in Tanglewood. Neschling has been music director of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon, Sankt Gallen Theater in Switzerland, Teatro Massimo in Palermo and the Bordeaux Opera. During the twelve years under his leadership (1997–2008), the São Paulo State Symphony became a first rate international orchestra, and recorded a series of CDs of Brazilian and international music, winning five Diapason d'Or and one Latin Grammy.

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

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