If one were to choose a single volume out of Naxos' edition of Villa-Lobos' piano music with the purpose of getting to know the great Brazilian's voluminous output in this genre, then you would make no better choice than this one, Villa-Lobos: Piano Music 6. This contains Villa-Lobos' largest scale masterwork for piano, the highly experimental and ambitious Rudepoêma of 1921-1926 written for Artur Rubinstein, however this is wisely placed toward the end to make room for some of Villa-Lobos' more appealing and immediate ...
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If one were to choose a single volume out of Naxos' edition of Villa-Lobos' piano music with the purpose of getting to know the great Brazilian's voluminous output in this genre, then you would make no better choice than this one, Villa-Lobos: Piano Music 6. This contains Villa-Lobos' largest scale masterwork for piano, the highly experimental and ambitious Rudepoêma of 1921-1926 written for Artur Rubinstein, however this is wisely placed toward the end to make room for some of Villa-Lobos' more appealing and immediate creations. These include As Très Marias, an intoxicating set of etudes that helped make Villa-Lobos' reputation in the United States through a classic recording made for Columbia in 1941 by pianist Guiomar Novaes. There are also some lesser known works that exemplify Villa-Lobos' unique artistic personality -- his Saudades das Selvas Brasileiras (1927), which could easily pass for piano music written in the 1980s, and his remarkable Petizada (The Little Brats, 1912), where the idiom of...
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