Wednesday, September 4, 2002

New Symphonies CD

"A new Symphony by Heitor Villa-Lobos is a world event."

- from a review in the Christian Science Monitor of the premiere of the 11th Symphony (quoted in Vasco Mariz's Heitor Villa-Lobos: Life & Work of the Brazilian Composer (1970).






Though it hasn't shown up at Amazon.com (or the other Amazon sites around the world), the new cpo CD of Symphonies 3 & 9 conducted by Carl St. Clair can be purchased from the European site JPC. Thanks to Bert Berenschot in the Netherlands for this update. Check here for all the information, including sound samples. I haven't ordered from JPC myself, but the CD is certainly a good buy at US$11.96 (13.99 Euros). As Mariz says, "The Ninth Symphony seems to have been composed in 1951 but has never been performed, and I have no data on it." So this release is certainly of world-wide interest to music lovers.

The early 3rd Symphony makes up the bulk of the rest of the disc, which has a nice filler in the "Ouverture de l'Homme Tel." I've often seen this work in lists of Max Eschig publications, and wondered what it sounded like. The short Real Audio excerpt on the JPC site includes only a fanfare, but you can tell from the clips that the orchestral playing from St. Clair's Stuttgart forces remains of the highest quality. I'm certainly looking forward to this one!

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