Cellist Lars Hoefs, a longtime friend of the USC Polish Music Center and an exceptionally dedicated advocate for Polish music around the world, has recently published an album of cello and piano music, entitled “Villa-Lobos, Grand Concerto for Cello and Piano.” What is quite interesting—and very much in line with Lars’s ongoing research of Chopin’s influence on Brazilian composers—is that this latest recording includes two mazurkas by Heitor Villa-Lobos, the famous (and quite prolific) Brazilian composer who died in 1959 at the age of 72.
One of the earliest compositions by Villa-Lobos is, in fact, his Mazurka em ré maior for guitar, a work dating from 1901 when he was just fourteen. Another Mazurka, written for solo guitar and titled Simples, dates from 1910. There is also his Mazurka-Chôro, the opening movement of the Suíte popular brasileira, originally composed in 1928 but revised twenty years later. Chopin’s spirit seems to have inspired Villa-Lobos for at least one more opus: Homenagem a Chopin, a two-movement suite for piano solo composed of Nocturne and Ballade and written in 1949, the year Chopin’s centennial was celebrated around the world.
Accompanied by his pianist wife, Aline Alves, Maestro Hoefs included two Mazurkas on this survey of Villa-Lobos’s chamber music—a recording the Op. 1 (presumably an adaptation of the one for guitar in D major), as well as the Mazurka-Chôro, this one arranged for cello and piano by David Ashbridge.
The three opening tracks of the Hoefs-Alves recording are devoted to the Grande Concerto para Violoncello, Op. 50, an ambitious three-movement work composed by Villa-Lobos in 1913, presented by the Hoefs-Alves duo in its original version for cello and piano. Villa-Lobos was an accomplished cellist and this work is written in a late romantic tradition of European (especially Russian) music. A few years later Villa-Lobos scored this Concerto for a symphony orchestra (double woodwinds, triple brass, harp, percussion and strings) and it was world-premiered at Rio de Janeiro’s Teatro Municipal on 10 May 1919.
Two other works, Melodia sentimental (arranged by Lars Hoefs) and The Last Song (arranged by Ondrej Veselý) complete this attractive and singular offering by these two Brazil-based artists. Happy listening!
[Source: press release]