Heitor Villa-Lobos - Piano Music (Marc-André Hamelin)

Information

Composer: Heitor Villa-Lobos

• As três Marias
• Prole do bebê
• Rudepoema

Marc-André Hamelin, piano

Date: 2000

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67176

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Review

Here are two invaluable raids on Villa-Lobos’s rich and exotic store of piano music. First and foremost is Marc-Andre Hamelin, whose transcendental sheen and facility bless everything he plays. He makes As tres Marias (‘The three stars’) wink and scintillate with an inimitable verve before continuing with both books of Prole do bebe, registering the change from affection to savagery with impeccable mastery and insight. In Book 1 the tolling bells at the heart of the enchanting ‘Caboclinha’ ring out fortissimo and ben marcato, while Hamelin’s fleetness in ‘Polichinelle’ leaves all others standing.

Yet such delectable charm is virtually erased by the increasingly astringent and percussive Book 2. Here the insect and animal world has graduated from innocence to experience with a vengeance. The ‘Little Wooden Horse’, eyes dilating and nostrils flaring, gallops away from danger and the paper cockroach sounds disillusioned with its lot. Red Riding Hood, too, would surely have fled in terror, not deceived for a moment, from Villa-Lobos’s jaw-snapping, not-so-little ‘Glass Wolf’. Finally, there is Rudepoema, the composer’s supposed masterpiece. Rubinstein was understandably disconcerted by a portrait of such roughness. Hoping for a more genial offering with which to delight his adoring public he quickly abandoned Rudepoema. True, there are brief moments of bittersweet accessibility (the first at 8'41''), but elsewhere the assault is relentless, and even Hamelin’s superb and unflagging brio hardly reconciles you to the music’s length and bombast.

Hyperion’s production is as immaculate as ever and the uninformative accompanying notes, which tell us that the second Prole do bebe ‘continues the charm of the first’ are compensated for by a fine illustration of Helen Millard’s glass wolf baying at the moon and stars.

-- Bryce Morrison, 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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Marc-André Hamelin (born September 5, 1961 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian virtuoso pianist and composer. He is recognized worldwide for the originality and technical brilliance of his performances of the classic repertoire. Hamelin, who has received 11 Grammy Award nominations, has recorded a wide variety of composers' music with the Hyperion label. He is well known for his attention to lesser-known composers especially of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and for performing works by pianist-composers. Hamelin has also composed several works, including a set of piano études in all of the minor keys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc-André_Hamelin

http://www.marcandrehamelin.com/

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