Heitor Villa-Lobos - Do Brasil (Wilhem Latchoumia)

Information

Composer: Heitor Villa-Lobos

1. Chôro No. 5, W205: Alma brasileira
2. Chôro No. 2, W198
3. Ondulando, estudio, Op. 31, W082
4. Cirandas, W220: No. 3, Senhora dona Sancha
5. Cirandas, W220: No. 6, Passa passa gavião
6. Cirandas, W220: No. 15, Que lindos olhos
7. Cirandas, W220: No. 10, O pintor de Cannahy
8. Cirandas, W220: No. 9, Fui no Tororó
9. Cirandas, W220: No. 4, O cravo brigou com a rosa
10. Cirandas, W220: No. 2, A condessa
11. Cirandas, W220: No. 8, Vamos atrás da serra, Calunga
12. Cirandas, W220: No. 5, Pobre cega
13. Cirandas, W220: No. 16, Có-Có-Có
14. La caixinha de música quebrada, W256
15. Suite infantil No. 1, W 053: No. 2, Nenê vai dormir
16. New York Skyline Melody, W 407
17. Rudepoêma, W184

Wilhem Latchoumia, piano

Date: 2023

Label: La Dolce Volta

https://www.ladolcevolta.com/produit/villa-lobos-do-brasil/?lang=en

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Review

The La Dolce Volta label’s high-end production values have always befitted Wilhem Latchoumia’s intelligent musicianship and cultivated pianism. Collectors familiar with the French pianist’s earlier Falla and Wagner solo releases for the label should understand what I mean, and, more importantly, take up my invitation to savour this superb Villa-Lobos recital.

The opening selection is indicative of the entire programme’s high quality. Latchoumia’s flexibly lilting treatment of Chôro No 5’s opening section gathers robust energy and rhythmic exultation in the central climaxes. Originally for flute and clarinet, Chôro No 2 loses nothing in translation in the composer’s own piano version, especially in regard to Latchoumia’s deft handling of the chirpy melodic lines and bracing polyrhythms. He sensitively cradles the undulating middle voice accompaniment of the Op 31 étude, while creating high-register magic out of La caixinha de música quebrada’s tangy dissonances. New York Skyline Melody might be described as Rachmaninov recomposed by Kurt Weill in his Threepenny Opera period; here Latchoumia plays up the music’s sensuality and harmonic restlessness, although I prefer the stronger melodic profile projected in Roberto Szidon’s decades-old DG recording (10/76).

Selections from Villa-Lobos’s Cirandas cycle prove no less characterful. Latchoumia spices up the repeated notes of ‘Senhora Dona Sancha’ with edgy dynamic inflections, while giving sexier breadth to the quasi-glissandos of ‘Fui no Tororó’ in relation to Sonia Rubinsky’s comparably masterly yet more literal interpretation (Naxos, 7/99). On the other hand, some may prefer her smoother and steadier dispatch of ‘Có-Có-Có’ to Latchoumia’s more emphatically accented traversal. However, to hear Latchoumia’s lyrical gifts in their most heartfelt and simple manifestations, look no further than ‘A condessa’ and the beautiful ‘Nenê vai dormir’.

No matter how thick the underbrush of Rudepoêma’s textures may be, there’s nowhere to hide or to cover up with emergency pedalling. Latchoumia approaches this wild and challenging opus as if he were orchestrating at the piano, voicing the rapid massed chords like a well-oiled woodwind section, and seemingly bowing rather than hammering out the themes. You won’t find Nelson Freire’s nervous energy and tumultuous sweep (Warner, 9/74) but Latchoumia’s innate flair for the idiom and detailed note-reading yields nothing to the late Brazilian pianist, nor to other versions of reference from the aforementioned Szidon and Marc-André Hamelin (Hyperion, 10/00). Highly recommended.

-- Jed Distler, Gramophone

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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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Wilhem Latchoumia (born 2 May 1974 in Lyon) is a French pianist. He studied at the Conservatoire National de Musique et de Danse in Lyon, and attended master classes by Yvonne Loriod and Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Latchoumia pursues a brilliant career as a recitalist, concert soloist and chamber musician in France and on the international scene, where he appears in the most prestigious venues. He works with the leading French orchestras and with other international formations of the front rank. His taste for contemporary music has earned him the favour of such composers as Pierre Boulez and Philippe Hersant.

 https://www.ladolcevolta.com/artiste/wilhem-latchoumia/?lang=en

https://www.wilhemlatchoumia.fr/

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