Welcome to The Villa-Lobos Website - Heitor Villa-Lobos on the web, since 1994
From New York Public Library's Digital Gallery: the Araponga [left], a Brazilian bird with a distinctive call. Villa-Lobos quoted this in his Bachianas Brasileiras #4. Telling this to Nicholas Slonimsky during his visit to Rio in the early 40s, he sent his visitor off to a bird shop to verify the story. But there were no Arapongas to be found:
“I returned to the government office of music education in Rio de Janeiro, where Villa-Lobos served as director, and I reported to him my failure to find an araponga. He called in one of his assistants and asked him, ‘What is the high note that the araponga sings?’ ‘Si bemol!’ the other answered with assurance. ‘Vous voyez?’ Villa-Lobos said to me. The more evidence he produced, the less I believed it; I even harbored the sneaking suspicion that the whole scene had been carefully rehearsed for my benefit.”
Perfect Pitch: An Autobiography, p. 156 - Listen to the Araponga:
2009: Villa-Lobos on CD
Though the Ano Villa-Lobos was marked by many adventurous Villa-Lobos concert programs around the world, there weren't that many new recordings released with unfamiliar repertoire in 2009. Rather, the keynote for Villa-Lobos on disc in 2009 was consolidation. This has resulted in an embarrassment of bargain discs, and it's now much easier to build something approaching a complete Villa-Lobos collection. It's now also easier to judge Villa-Lobos's greatness as a composer of orchestral and chamber music.
2009: the Ano Villa-Lobos
The year of the 50th Anniversary of the death of Villa-Lobos - dubbed the Ano Villa-Lobos in Brazil - marks the high-water mark (so far) for the reputation of the composer. Here are some of the highlights of the Villa-Lobos Year, as seen from the Villa-Lobos Eyrie, high atop the city of Red Deer, Alberta.
January: with 47 concerts in the Villa-Lobos Website database, including one with Choros #06 in Warsaw. The big news in Brazil was the firing of conductor John Neschling from the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo (Osesp). I was sad to learn about the death of Villa-Lobos scholar and pianist Ana Stella Schic .
Villa-Lobos at the TV Cultura Website
There are great resources available at the Villa-Lobos section of the TV Cultura website , undertaken during the run-up to the 50th Anniversary of Villa's death on November 17, 2009.
The site includes videos from TV Cultura programs from 2009 and in the past. One of the highlights is this 2005 video of Cristina Ortiz performing Choros #11 with John Neschling conducting the OSESP.
There is also some really interesting streaming audio from a number of really interesting albums:
- Villa-Lobos e os brinquedos de roda (a children's choir singing songs from the Guia pratico
- Pianist Arthur Moreira Lima's 1981 album Dá licença...
- Villa-Lobos works by cellist Antonio Meneses
- Fala Villa-Lobos (Villa-Lobos speaks)
