Villa-Lobos Violin Sonatas on Naxos

courtesy of Naxos of America

This past Friday Naxos released the latest installment in its Music in Brazil series. Once again the release involved the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos, this time presenting his three violin sonatas on a single CD. The violinist is Emmanuele Baldini, accompanied at the piano by Pablo Rossi.

Naxos has been generous with its attention of Villa-Lobos. In November of 2017 the label concluded its project to record all of the Villa-Lobos symphonies, performed by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra conducted by the Brazilian Isaac Karabtchevsky. While that project was in progress, guitarist Andrea Bissoli prepared a set of CDs collected until the title Complete Guitar Manuscripts.

The violin sonatas cover a much narrower interval of time in the Villa-Lobos catalog. His first sonata, also identified as a “Fantasia,” was composed in 1912 and was structured as a single movement in three sections played without interruption. About two years later Villa-Lobos composed his first three-movement sonata, again identified as a “Fantasia.” The third sonata, composed is 1920 and also in three movements, is likely to strike listeners as the most mature. The Wikipedia page that lists Villa-Lobos’ compositions also includes a fourth sonata completed in 1923; but my Google search failed to turn up any recordings of this piece or, for that matter, any account of its performance.

Given what many know about Villa-Lobos’ more familiar work, it is worth observing that these three sonatas tend, for the most part, to keep any “Brazilian influences” in check. Those influences are most evident in the first movement of the second sonata; and, by the time Villa-Lobos had advanced to his third sonata, he seemed more interested in what was happening in Paris, rather than in Brazil. (Villa-Lobos would subsequently travel to Paris in 1923.)

Without those Brazilian influences as a guideline, Baldini consistently finds the right rhetorical stance to take for each of the sonatas and their movements on this recording. For that matter there is also consistent uniqueness in the composer’s approach to what his thematic material is and how its elements are structured. Thus, while the music itself tends to be more subdued that what one expects from more familiar Villa-Lobos compositions, these three sonatas have much to offer to the efforts of the attentive listener.