Heitor VILLA-LOBOS Symphony No. 12 Uirapuru • Mandu-Çarará São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Choir and Children’s Choir Isaac Karabtchevsky Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) The first movement has a curious structure: the first other composers would be filler or linking material, ends up Symphony No. 12 • Uirapuru • Mandu-Çarará theme, with its strong ascending impulse, which swells on taking on an involuntarily leading role in his symphonies. In the cellos and bassoons and is answered by the violins, his final symphony, Villa-Lobos delights in a sea of themes Canticum Sacrum. Symphonies and concertos were reappears modified after the second thematic group, and sounds, and flings them generously in the direction of springing up everywhere: Shostakovich and Kabalevsky which is introduced in a more moderate fashion by the the listeners, to quote his own words, in the form of “letters were bowing to the communist cultural agenda, and in the clarinet, followed by the oboe, bassoon and tuba. The written to posterity without expecting a reply”. West there was an attempt to recover the great concluding section is loosely based on elements of the The hiatus between the official date of its composition symphonic tradition. This is perceptible in the work of second theme and some secondary material that had got (1917) and its première (1935 in Buenos Aires) seems to Villa-Lobos, but also in that of Martinů, Milhaud, lost along the way. In this way Villa-Lobos complies with suggest that Uirapuru is one of the cases where Villa-Lobos Hartmann, Tippett, Copland and many others. the economy and possibilities for thematic development dated the score to reflect when he conceived of the work, Where had Villa-Lobos, the outlandish iconoclast of demanded of a symphonic allegro, at the same time as rather than the actual date of composition. In the case of the 1920s, been hiding? His project to formulate a giving free rein to his imagination in the detail. Uirapuru, which among his most frequently performed classical language for Brazilian music was still ongoing, The Adagio is one of the most interesting of all the works is the most original and intransigently modern, the but it was a project of many facets. The lavish symphonies, and has an anxious and solemn quality. The bringing forward of the date would mean that the composer landscaping of his ballets and Choros was one of them; theme announced by the bassoon is a collection of was the first to use certain musical techniques that, in the tropical baroque quality of Bachianas Brasileiras was archetypes: a theme initially similar to Wagner’s Tristan, theory, he would only become familiar with after living in another, as were the formal surprises of his chamber announced in the high-pitch section of Stravinsky’s Rite, Paris in the 1920s. The fact is that Uirapuru is, to a large music. He remained faithful to each of these facets, but without repeating notes, in the manner of a dodecaphonic extent, based on one of his first symphonic works, the within the context of each genre. The least explored facet, series that never materializes. It is developed with different symphonic poem Tédio de Alvorada (Tedium of Dawn) of however, is one that he devoted a great deal of energy to counterpoint modalities, passed on to the bass clarinet and 1916 (which premièred in 1918), and it is highly probable in the last decade of his life, namely being a dedicated the English horn. A short contrasting section is dominated by that Villa-Lobos had worked on the radicalization of his composer of symphonies and string quartets. the brass section, and the sinuous melody is taken up again aesthetic approach throughout the 1920s. But Villa-Lobos being Villa-Lobos, these apparently by the strings, in the midst of a rich counterpoint, which Uirapuru is the offspring of international modernism Villa-Lobos in New York, 1959 conventional works steer well clear of official combines quartal, chromatic and pandiatonic1 elements. and in it Villa-Lobos not only displays his constant interest Photo: Sabine Weiss academicism. Symphony No. 12 brings together the The Scherzo is a piece of such orchestral brilliance in the richness of texture, tonal expansion, orchestral symphonic craftsmanship of the great masters and a that it could easily be used as an encore. The fourth colour, fluidity of form, melodic symmetry and the re- Villa-Lobos completed his final symphony on his 70th typical explosion of energy, unusual harmonic patterns, interval dominates the theme, in the form of a call, and reading of his compositional references (particularly birthday, in 1957, dedicating it to his companion Mindinha. rhythmic restlessness and a fondness for free again, in a dazzling ascending impulse. A theme of Wagner, Debussy and Stravinsky), but creates a When it premièred the following year, in a performance by the counterpoint and symmetrical figurations. Villa-Lobos parallel minor chords, announced by the horns and, later, specifically Brazilian sound, without directly drawing on Washington National Symphony Orchestra, contemporary betrays no hint of nostalgia, jadedness or any other sign by the tubas, adds a humorous touch. The central section, folkloric elements – precisely what makes him one of the composition was going through a turbulent phase. of being in his twilight years: it is a piece of work that with its slightly oriental flavour, does not interrupt the supreme inventors of Brazilian culture. It was the time of Stockhausen, Kagel and seems to have been penned by someone 50 years breathless vitality of the movement as a whole. The composer created a storyline that suited the Schaeffer’s first great electronic and musique concrète younger, but that, in its historical context, sounds The final movement tangentially follows the form of a ballet format, perhaps in the hope that Diaghilev would be compositions; Messiaen was composing his Catalogue strangely bound to the past. rondo, with a military-style theme, which returns interested in including it in the repertoire of the Ballets d’oiseaux, Boulez was loosening his ties to integral The typical re-reading of Bach, Wagner and the French transformed at regular intervals, and alternates with Russes, a collaboration that unfortunately never serialism in Le Marteau sans maître, and Xenakis was and Russian composers can here be extended to the Villa- another more impassioned one with a sequential structure. materialized. The uirapuru is an astonishing bird even in gaining recognition for applying statistics to composition Lobos who took Haydn’s concepts of propulsion and the The bass line is extraordinarily active throughout the the context of the biodiversity of the Amazon. It is found in Pithoprakta. But at the same time the great musical unified gesture as a model for his string quartets. movement and creates a kind of link to the large amount of only in the depths of the forest, and has an extraordinarily institutions were commissioning works by those Symphony No. 12, along with No. 9, is the lightest and most secondary material that appears before the triumphant melodious song, tuneful and varied, whose power of composers who had been part of the modernist vanguard compact of his symphonies. The orchestration, despite still finale. This exemplifies the difficulty that listeners have in seduction only manifests itself in the midst of the silence of the 1910s and 1920s. Stravinsky was making an about- including a considerable percussion section, dispenses finding their way through Villa-Lobos’s symphonies: his of other kinds of song – all of which endows it with a turn by adopting an austere serialism in Threni and with the piano and the vast wind sections of the others. imagination is so consistently bold that what in the hands of powerful mythical force. In the ballet’s storyline, indigenous groups find wants to lure them to his hut and devour them. They OSESP Choir themselves drawn deep into the forest by the magic of the manage to deceive Curupira, go into his hut, kill his wife, bird’s song; there, a young woman hunts the uirapuru and throw her into a cauldron of stew and flee. Curupira eats The combination of a group of singers that have a solid musical training with Naomi sees it transform into a young male warrior. Finally, when the stew and goes to hunt for the children, but when his Munakata, one of the major Brazilian conductors, gives the OSESP Choir particular he is killed by an indigenous intruder, he transforms once own belly answers his cries he realizes that he has eaten importance in the musical life of Brazil. The choir tackles the great works of the again into a bird. The story and the music create a very his wife. The forest spirits are saddened, as he is, and the choral-symphonic repertoire and also performs a cappella in concerts at the Sala distant echo of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un children manage to find the way back to their village, São Paulo and across the state, in a repertoire drawn from various periods, with an faune and Stravinsky’s Firebird. Villa-Lobos, without the where Mandu-Çarará is waiting for them so that they can emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the works of Brazilian interest in real bird song that Messiaen had, transforms celebrate together, in a finale of dances and games. composers such as Almeida Prado, Aylton Escobar, Gilberto Mendes, Francisco the theme of the uirapuru into a model of stylized The score is notable for several reasons. First, for the Mignone and Heitor Villa-Lobos. In 2009 the OSESP Choir made its first recording, symmetry, which opens up into a complex network of way in which Villa-Lobos establishes the contrast Canções do Brasil (Songs of Brazil), and in 2013 it recorded choral works by the formal and harmonic growth.