If it were true that the best music inevitably rises to the top and that what sinks into invisibility probably deserves to do so, the famous Aria for soprano and eight cellos from Bachianas brasileiras No. 5 and the engagingly onomatopoeic ''Little train of the Caipira'' (the finale of No. 2) would be all that we need to know of Villa-Lobos's cycle. In fact, although some of the remaining 26 movements in this complete recording are distinctly inferior to the Aria and the ''Little train'', several are at least as good and a few are distinctly more substantial. Indeed, the level of Villa-Lobos's imagination has its peaks and troughs within movements, often enough; but the Aria and the ''Little train'' are at all events characteristic of it. We encounter the suave melodiousness of the former again and again: it is not always so long-breathed (Villa-Lobos's fondness for sequences leads him at times into writing what might better be called 'Albinonianas' or 'Pachelbelianas brasileiras') but it is always grateful, sometimes memorably so. And the brilliant raucousness of the ''Little train'', with its primary-coloured scoring, its seasoning of exotic percussion and its satisfying simple Latin-American-flavoured tune, is wholly typical as well. So is a naive but endearing weakness for cheerful noise: whenever a particularly succulent tune turns up (which happens quite often) it is usually wise to turn the volume control down, since Villa-Lobos can seldom resist the temptation to repeat it, fff it not ffff, preferably with a massive gong-stroke at the cadence (he was very partial to gongs). He is often garrulous, too, either dropping a tune abruptly because another has just occurred to him or, more often, repeating himself with ever more polychrome scoring, but his colours are so richly saturated that it is hard to hold this against him.
I would find it rather difficult to consign any of the Bachianas to oblivion. No. 1, because its first movement, after all, is a rather messy sequence of unrelated and undeveloped themes? But it would be a pity to lose the mellifluous and rich-textured central movement (another of those arias for massed cellos) or the lively dance-fugue finale (though the performance here is a bit messy and strenuous, rather below the standard of the set as a whole). No. 2 must be kept, not only for the ''Little train'' (of which Batiz gives an enjoyably pictorial reading, every creak and wheeze of the venerable locomotive painstakingly evoked): the lazy saxophone solo evoking a Brazilian cousin of Gershwin's Sportin' Life is a real Villa-Lobos collectable as well. No. 3 has good tunes in three of its four movements (and affords the incidental pleasure of watching the obbligato piano doing its Rachmaninov impressions whenever it thinks the orchestra isn't looking). No. 4 (like No. 3 for full orchestra, and how Villa-Lobos relishes it) sounds like one of Sir Henry Wood's dishings-up of Bach at times, but snaps out of it in time for a vigorous folk-dance finale. No. 5 is indispensable, of course, but not, for my taste, in this reading: Barbara Hendrick's voice is beautiful but fluttery, she finds little charm or expressiveness in the second movement (the one with words: Batiz takes it too fast for her to make anything of them) and the cellos are backwardly balanced in relation to her. No. 6 is the odd man out, a two-movement duet for flute and bassoon: a pair of spruce and pretty two-part inventions, plainly but decently played.
The last three Bachianas are the most serious of the sequence. The opening Aria of No. 7 is at times vociferously over-scored (here and elsewhere in these enthusiastic and capable performances Batiz could have clarified the over-stuffed climaxes rather more), but there is something of nobility to its main melody and still more (despite a touch of Stokowski here and there) to the soberly impressive fugal finale. No. 8 has a decent fugue, too, and several moments in which Villa-Lobos demonstrates that his palette includes rich browns and sombre blacks as wel as all the colours of a tropical aviary, while No. 9 is perhaps the most striking of them all and the most Bachian: a fantasy (richly and moodily rhapsodic, on one of Villa-Lobos's finest melodies) and an athletically syncopated and highly resourceful final fugue. It is splendidly played, with a real open-hearted eloquence to its concluding pages.
The Guitar Concerto fill-up (on the CD set only) occupies less than 20 minutes of a 180-minute set, and is unlikely to affect anyone's decision whether or not to but it. It is a decent enough reading of a work that sounds especially pallid and perfunctory after the Ninth Bachiana; for the record, Moreno's sound is a bit relentlessly bright, and a low hum is audible throughout the cadenza. Those with a soft spot for the piece will probably prefer either Romero on Philips (coupled with Castelnuovo-Tedesco's First Concerto and a guitar transcription of Rodrigo's Sones en la Giralda) or Bream on RCA (his couplings are Villa-Lobos's Preludes and Etudes). But for the complete Bachianas, assuming that most admirers of Villa-Lobos will already have a favourite recording of No. 5, Batiz is a good advocate, and his readings are on the whole brilliantly recorded.MEO