Forest of the Amazon had – even more than usual with Villa-Lobos – a confusing genesis; and though a recording conducted by the composer was apparently issued in 1959, this was of an abridged version. Only now, thanks to the efforts of the conductor here (the president of the Villa-Lobos Music Society), who undertook the monumental task of collating the various manuscript sources, many of them riddled with errors, has the work been presented complete. It had started out as music for a film of W. H. Hudson’s Green Mansions (with Anthony Perkins, and Audrey Hepburn as the bird-woman Rima), but with typical high-handedness the film producers had jettisoned most of the score in favour of another by Bronislau Kaper. Not surprisingly, Villa-Lobos was furious and decided to re-use and recast his music, transferring sections and adding a brief overture and four new songs to Portuguese texts – Green Mansions had of course been set in Argentina, where the language is Spanish – to become an extended symphonic poem, or rather, a multi-section rhapsody, which breathes a pantheistic doctrine of Nature, universal love and extinction.
As might be expected from this composer and with this subject, this is a busily inventive score of great complexity for very large orchestral forces (including numerous metallophones and native percussion), making virtuoso demands on the participants (all of whom acquit themselves brilliantly under Alfred Heller’s expert direction). Exotic colorations and intricate textures abound, with Amerindian chants, bird-song, energetic dance rhythms and occasional folk-like themes in this vast melting-pot. In it are found both frenzied violence and passionate lyricism, with, here and there, simpler interludes of sweetness (notably the start of “Rima’s music”, various vocalises and the songs, delightfully sung by Renee Fleming – the “Love song” and the “Sentimental melody”, first cousin to the famous Aria in Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, enticingly lyrical). One feels a bit steamrollered at the end of 73 minutes, but without question this is an important addition to the available Villa-Lobos repertoire, especially as the technical quality of the recording is deserving of the highest praise.'