Brazil, Bach and Heitor Villa-Lobos

As part of the great musical send-off to the Summer Olympics in London, there was a preview of music to come in 2016 as part of the Rio de Janeiro Summer Games.  I'm sure many classical music fans recognized the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 of Brazil's best known composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos. Brazilian soprano Marisa Monte, who was born in Rio, sang his most famous composition as she appeared to be transformed into a giant flower via the magical stagecraft that characterized much of last Sunday night's TV presentation broadcast around the world.  But this gorgeous music with its seductive, sinuous melody is only one of nine pieces Villa-Lobos wrote inspired by both the native music of Brazil and Johann Sebastian Bach. What a combination, you might think!  And it is something unique and wonderful that he accomplished.  Villa-Lobos was born in Rio in 1887 and lived until 1959, and his musical training and experience encompassed the folk music of his homeland and the European classical tradition.  He himself played the cello, guitar and clarinet.  His early musical experiences included playing in Brazilian street-music bands and playing cello in a Rio opera house orchestra.  He met Darius Milhaud and Artur Rubinstein when they visited Rio, and in the 1920's,  traveled to Paris and hobnobbed with Edgar Varese, Pablo Picasso, Leopold Stokowski and Aaron Copland. The Bachianas Brasilerias are a series of nine works written between 1930 and 1945 that freely adapt European Baroque composition techniques (hence the Bach part of the title) to Brazilian music.  They are marvelously scored for different combinations of instruments, and only one is for human voice, No. 5 (soprano and cellos).  Four of them are for full orchestra (Nos. 2, 4, 7 and 8), No. 3 is for piano and orchestra,  No.1 for just cellos, No. 9 for string orchestra, No. 6 for flute and bassoon. Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1 is heard fairly often on the radio, and No. 2, which should be heard more, has great atmosphere (with saxophone) and a colorful final movement that is essentially a short symphonic poem depicting a train ride through the jungle (The Little Train of Caipira).  There are some exotic sounds and much engaging music to be enjoyed in these very creative and imaginative works from Brazil's greatest composer. Here is Heitor Villa-Lobos'  most famous music sung by a great Brazilian soprano of the past: http://youtu.be/bLZD0XplYrI