Heitor Villa-Lobos - Forest of the Amazon (John Neschling)

Information

Composer: Heitor Villa-Lobos

• Floresta do Amazonas

Anna Korondi, soprano

São Paulo Symphony Choir & Orchestra

John Neschling, conductor

Date: 2010

Label: BIS

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Review

A putative film score yields a song-cycle full of characteristic surprises

Any true Villa-Lobos fan will have to have the 1958 EMI recording of this work, conducted by the composer and featuring the Brazilian singer Bidu Sayão, and there are a number of other versions, whose availability is variable. Heller’s Moscow recording with Renée Fleming was something of a sonic revelation; Svetlanov’s recording, featuring Natalia Gerasimova, I have not heard.

This new release features even better – SACD – sound, and a dramatic, immaculately prepared performance under John Neschling, who did so much to raise the São Paulo orchestra’s profile. The music’s origins lie in a film score written by the composer in 1958 for the film Green Mansions. Villa-Lobos had no idea what writing for a film entailed and arrived with a full symphonic score, of which only fragments were used, in new orchestrations by Bronislaw Kaper. This work, of nearly 80 minutes, is what was left! The music is, of course, wilful, fluid and entirely unpredictable, with moments of extreme violence and tremendous beauty – I rather think that if a gem such as “Em plena floresta” were more widely known, it would feature on many an orchestra’s programme as an encore. The orchestration is variegated, by turns dense and transparent, lush and spare. Hungarian soprano Anna Korondi is excellent and her Portuguese perfectly acceptable: though Sayão is in a class of her own, the balance between voice and orchestra on the old recording is far from ideal. This is a different matter entirely. Very warmly recommended.

-- Ivan Moody, Gramophone

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

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/aug/19/villa-lobos-floresta-do-amazonas-cd-review

https://www.amazon.com/Floresta-Do-Amazonas-Heitor-Villa-Lobos/dp/B003LR4QQI

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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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