Villa-Lobos and the String Quartet
- TV Series
- 2012–2013
- 26m
YOUR RATING
Life and music of Villa-Lobos through 13 episodes.Life and music of Villa-Lobos through 13 episodes.Life and music of Villa-Lobos through 13 episodes.
Photos
Storyline
Featured review
A great rendition of Villa-Lobos's string quartets!
This DVD offers an interpretation of the complete series of seventeen string quartets composed by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959). These works are undoubtedly one of the most important cycle of quartets written in the 20th century, besides Bartók and Shostakovich's quartets. The locations were set in some beautiful and meaningful places in Rio de Janeiro, and the recording is clear and well-defined in tone and timbre. About the performers, the Radamés Gnatalli String Quartet is formed by very committed musicians, especially dedicated to spread the output of Brazilian composers. Their performance is tight and inspiring, leaded by the superb Carla Rincón at the first violin. Commentaries by the legendary guitarist and former director of Museu Villa-Lobos, Turibio Santos, are insightful and grounded in the remarkable book written in Portuguese by Arnaldo Estrella in 1970. These works deserve a special place in the string quartet literature and fortunately seems that there is a sort of revival about them. Villa-Lobos's music is compelling, starting from the earlier quartets, in which one can hear the influence from Cesar Franck's school, since SQ2 and 3 are actually written in cyclic style. The quartets no. 5 and no. 6 are the most openly Brazilian, if one looks for elements related to folk music. But Villa-Lobos's style is very eclectic, and one can find extreme chromaticism, even close to Berg's Lyric Suite or Bartók's no.3, especially in no. 9 and no. 10. The Brazilian composer was very fond about symmetry and there is a lot of musical structures that reveals his particular mode of organizing form, phrase, and interval structure from this perspective. Remarkable music, in an amazing DVD!
helpful•00
- tarsosa
- Nov 20, 2013
Details
- Runtime26 minutes
- Color
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content