Heitor Villa-Lobos - String Quartet No. 4 (1917)

Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 – November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known South American composer of all time. A prolific composer, he wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2000 works by his death in 1959. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas Brasileiras (Brazilian Bachian-pieces). His Etudes for guitar (1929) were dedicated to Andrés Segovia, while his 5 Preludes (1940) were dedicated to Arminda Neves d’Almeida, a.k.a. "Mindinha." Both are important works in the guitar repertory.

String Quartet No. 4 (1917, rev. 1949)
Dedicated to Frederico Nascimento Filho.

1. Allegro con moto
2. Andantino (tranquillo) (6:45)
3. Scherzo (Allegro vivace) (12:45)
4. Allegro (17:42)

Cuarteto Latinoamericano (Mexico City)

Description by Seth Brodsky [-]
The second movement of Heitor Villa-Lobos' String Quartet No. 4 could be labeled reactionary music. Its date (1917) would normally suggest something strange, "Fauvist" or "Cubist," "New Objectivist" or "Expressionist," or even "Serialist." But this static, meditative, utterly natural music corresponds to no modern "-isms." It is simply a wholly sincere, classically proportioned Andantino, carefully choosing its seemingly mundane materials, carefully conveying a mood, painting in sound. This is musical realism, widely perceived as obsolete in early twentieth-century Europe. But the salient point here is that Villa-Lobos is Brazilian, not European. And while the string quartet is a quintessentially European genre, in the hands of Villa-Lobos -- stunningly untroubled, distant hands -- the genre assumes an incomprehensible (to a Eurocentic mindset) aura. For much of the twentieth century, this has meant that the prolific Brazilian's quartets have been overlooked or even dismissed as irrelevant to a philosophy of music history totally obsessed with revolution and progress. But now, with a number of fantastic (and complete) recordings, pieces like the Fourth can be seen in a different light. Today, after the demise of so many modernist utopias, movements like this little Andantino strike the ear as the weirder things to come out of twentieth century music: utterly exceptional in their naturalism, happy lack of self-consciousness, and pure simplicity. The oasis of this music is extraordinary because, oddly enough, it's not "reactionary music"; it proceeds, carefully and confidently unfurling itself in a poker-faced ignorance as if it hadn't intercepted all the proclamations of crisis, apocalypse, and rebirth that burdened so many other twentieth century artists. This time capsule quality is perhaps underlined by the hiatus of some 30 years between the genesis of the work and its performance, by Quarteto Borgerth. And it should be no surprise that the other movements of the quartet exude a similarly happy consciousness. The Andantino follows a first movement of stunning equanimity, unfolding with the motoric regularity and confidence of a good fugue, but with a lightness and transparency that a fugue, in its strictness, cannot permit. The polyphonic impulses, however, eventually become interrupted by a much more gesturally explosive material, fleet and punctuating in its rising-falling tropes. And the sunny freedom continues in a propulsive Scherzo and dancing finale.

Видео Heitor Villa-Lobos - String Quartet No. 4 (1917) канала Bartje Bartmans