Villa-Lobos string quartets
Sun, Apr 11 2010, 12:04PM
Someone on another forum mentioned hearing a Villa-Lobos string quartet.
I'd have to admit not really knowing much about Villa-Lobos beyond Bachianas brasileiras, and I certainly didn't know that he wrote 17 string quartets.
So I got hold of 3, 10 & 15 by the Danubius Quartet* at about midnight, and was up into the wee small hours thoroughly enjoying them.
* eMusic has the full set of Marco-Polo / Naxos available.
My taste in string quartets is pretty catholic - from Beethoven and Schubert, to Bartók and Ligeti, and most points in between - and, on the basis of what I've heard so far, I think Villa-Lobos's are well worth a listen.
Mon, Apr 12 2010, 9:01PM
#2
RE: Villa-Lobos string quartets
The full set by Cuarteto Latinoamericano is also available for download on emusic and on ClassicsOnline. I purchased the set on CO, but unfortunately, I have not yet got around to listening to them. I am deluged with music.
I was very struck by Villa-Lobos's St Qs while researching the profile piece I wrote about him in the Sept 2008 issue. But, as always, Villa-Lobos demands you take the rough with the smooth: some of the later quartets strike me as composition-by-numbers, but rarified harmonics and a scherzo written (more-or-less) entirely in pizzicati in the Third Quartet are amazing...especially when you realise he wrote the piece in 1917! You could do worse than invest in the complete cycle of V-L quartets played by Cuarteto Latinoamericano on Brilliant Classics.