Celso Antunes conducts Dutch Villa-Lobos première
Celso Antunes, chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir, conducts on Friday, October 21, a programme of music by his famous countryman Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), preceded by the Suite française for orchestra by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). Paris is the factor linking the two composers. Villa-Lobos often traveled to Paris in the 1920s, and Poulenc was born, worked, spent his entire life and died there. From Paris, Villa-Lobos took European modernism, from, among others, Les Six, a group of composers that included Milhaud and Satie as well as Poulenc. Ultimately, he developed an individual style, a mixture of Brazilian folk music and the leading European musical currents.
His Nonetto ou Impressão rápida de todo o Brasil (1923) and Chôros nr. 10 (1926) are the clearest examples. Both works were last on Netherlands Radio ensemble programmes in the 1980s. In Villa-Lobos’ early Vidapura: Missa-Oratório (1919), which will have its Dutch premiere this weekend, European influence appears for the first time: Villa-Lobos had just become acquainted with music by Stravinsky through a tour of Diaghilev’s Les Ballets Russes and in Rio de Janeiro had met the French composer Darius Milhaud. An exciting career as a composer was about to unfold.
(repeat of the works by Villa-Lobos in the Sunday morning concert October 23, as part of the Brasil Festival Amsterdam; both concerts will be broadcast live on Netherlands Radio 4)
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Laatste aanpassing op Thursday 20 October 2011
