Prokofiev: Symphony No 5; Et Al / Thomas Schippers CD

' The story varies and is frequently told, but it bears repeating, for the response was characteristic of the man who was to become the first great and internationally known Brazilian composer. Strong, intuitive, passionate, he came to Paris having already absorbed the musical essence of the Brazilian people and, at the age of 35, having already recognized his own position relative to the mainstream of European music of the 20th century. In 1914 Villa-lobos was described as a dark young man with an intent face and deep black eyes. Because he lacked academic musical training his work, at that time, was not taken seriously. He was taught cello by his father (and went on to learn the guitar, the saxophone, and other wind instruments), but as a composer he was self-taught. His one attempt at formal training at the National Institute of Music in Rio de Janeiro 'began and ended almost simultaneously,' to quote Everett Helm. His musical learning, however, was extensive. But his timeliness and his greatness came not from this learning but the use he made of experiences performing popular music in the chĂ´ros or instrumental street bands in Rio and from extended travels (1905-1912) collecting Afro-Indian and Portuguese folk music of Brazil. He was encouraged by two European musicians, the French composer Darius Milhaud, who was attached to the French Legation at Rio de Janeiro from 1915 to 1918, and the pianist Artur Rubinstein, who visited Rio in 1918. Milhaud undoubtedly influenced Villa-Lobos, although influences of contemporary composers are difficult to establish. Even facts are hard to come by where Villa-Lobos is concerned, for he was a man of contradictions and of fantasy, who came to believe his stories and who resisted the need of others to pin him down. But European influences aside, it is the picturesque element that gives his music its primary interest; the sonorities, the play of colors, the popular rhythms are all essential to his personal expression. His melodies, frequently quoted from or composed in the style of folksongs or popular tunes, are modal, often pentatonic; the harmonies are unstable, dissonant, percussive, the rhythms irregular, the texture a complex fabric of rhythmic motives. He enjoyed his first success in Paris among the avant-garde who, like him, had turned to popular sources and were seeking solutions to the exhausted tonal harmonies of the 19th century. Twenty years later, in the 1940s, he enjoyed a great vogue in the United States; in 1931 he was appointed director of music education ...

His music varies from Classical to New Age, with jazz and ragtime influences in an spontaneous stream of consciousness style that is unusually coherent and structured for pure improvisation. Slepian mixes and layers the sounds with his feet as he plays. His lack of any pop-style ...