Heitor Villa-Lobos Website

Thanks, everyone, for your entries in this contests, which is now closed.

In early 2010 Naxos released an 8-CD box set of the complete Piano Music of Villa-Lobos that the Brazilian pianist Sonia Rubinsky recorded from 1999 to 2007.  To celebrate this important event, I will be sending out free copies of the individual discs to lucky winners over the next couple of months.

All you have to do is send an email to this special address - villa-lobos@rdpl.org - and let me know what your favourite Villa-Lobos piano work is.  If you're not sure, that's o.k. - you'll still be entered in the draw for these discs.  I'll draw one entry at random each week for the next 8 weeks, and will contact winners for their address.  You only need to enter once; your email stays in the prize pool until all 8 CDs have been won.

Thanks to Naxos USA for making these great discs available.

Here are some podcasts that include music by Villa-Lobos:

• NEW: James Melo discusses the music of M. Camargo Guarnieri in the new Naxos podcast.  I'm a big fan of Melo's work, especially his long liner-note essays in the Sonia Rubinsky Complete Villa-Lobos Piano Music series, also from Naxos.
• NEW: La chitarra di Villa-Lobos di Franz Andreani.  In this Italian podcast from RadioRock.to, Franz Andreani  provides a short introduction, and then plays the Narcisco Yepes versions of the Etudes & Preludes.
• National Gallery of Art podcast: Ritz Chamber Players - Program: Music by Dvorak, Mozart, and Villa-Lobos. The Ritz Chamber Players, the only all-African American professional chamber music ensemble, play masterworks of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century chamber music in concert at the National Gallery of Art. Members of the ensemble performing in this podcast are Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violin, Amadi Azikiwe, viola, Tahira Whittington, cello, Judy Dines, flute, and Terrence Wilson, piano.
• Raymond Bisha's new Naxos Podcast about the Villa-Lobos Complete Piano Music box-set, which includes an excellent interview with pianist Sonia Rubinsky.
• Julian Bream's official MySpace Music Site includes a performance of Choros #01.
• In the latest OSESP Podcast, the Osesp Choir sings the choral version of Xangô.
• CPFL Cultura's 50 anos sem Villa-Lobos - 8 excellent MP3 concerts to download.
• The Sunday Gramophone at Crooks & Liars' Newstalgia features a famous 1940 recording of Bachianas Brasileiras #1 by Walter Burle Marx and the Brazilian Festival Orchestra.  The sound may not be great, but this is a recording of great power, delicacy, and authenticity.

Between 1965 and 1981, the Museu Villa-Lobos in Rio de Janeiro, jointly with the Ministry of Education and Culture, published twelve volumes of essays, appreciations and reminiscences under the title 'Presença de Villa-Lobos'. The quality and interest of the contributions are variable; but for me, the best parts of the material are the texts by the composer himself, the perceptive analyses of aspects of his work by experts such as Eero Tarasti and Pierre Vidal, documentation about the composer's endeavours in musical education, and a wealth of recollections from artists and musicians who knew Villa-Lobos.

Some of the anecdotes that are told, for instance, by his widow, Mindinha, and by his close friends have appeared elsewhere in print; but since all the biographical material in the 'Presença' volumes is in Portuguese, the following examples, which I have translated and paraphrased, may help to give a flavour of the composer's personality for those not familiar with that language. Villa-Lobos could be fairly certain that the cultural elite who hosted him on his tours abroad - particularly in North America - understood not a word of Portuguese.