VILLA-LOBOS : Bachianas Brasileiras (Complete) (Schermerhorn) 3CD (2005) APE (tracks+.cue), lossless

All too often, box sets with the complete this or the collected that represent a by-the-pound mentality that's ultimately destructive to classical music, a substitute for intelligent program selection that entertains and instructs. The nine Bachianas Brasileiras of Heitor Villa-Lobos, however, may be the exception. Often excerpted (the two-movement No. 5, for voice and eight cellos is the most famous, with its Yma Sumac-like opening vocalise), they give the listener something more to think about when played from start to finish -- they reveal the variety of which Villa-Lobos was capable even when working within the triple set of constraints he established for himself. The Bachianas Brasileiras are, as the name implies, Brazilian tributes to J.S. Bach. Each movement of each of the nine pieces has a title and a recognizable shape corresponding to a common Baroque form (there are several prelude-fugue or toccata-fugue pairs, for instance), plus a Brazilian program or evocative Portuguese tempo indication. No. 2, for example, evokes a train trip across Brazil, and it's a delightful work without a trace of the implacable Futurist grimness of other modern train pieces. Additionally, Villa-Lobos uses Brazilian popular rhythms, sometimes front and center, sometimes lurking in shadow.
Yet the nine Bachianas Brasileiras sound quite different from one another, and hearing them all illuminates Villa-Lobos' imagination in dealing with a set of ideas that might easily have turned into an exercise. The instrumentation is fundamentally varied, for one thing; No. 1 is for an all-cello orchestra, No. 3 is a piano concerto; No. 6 is for flute and bassoon. Beyond that, Villa-Lobos wrings a whole range of expressive stances and emotional states out of his self-imposed vocabulary. Some movements are dramatic, some have a kind of exotic calm that form a sort of Brazilian counterpart to the evocation of American space that Copland made out of his French training, some are bracing neo-Classic essays. The most interesting insight to come from hearing all the Bachianas Brasileiras together, in fact, may be the realization of how French they are in spite of all their Brazilianisms and Baroque moves. (Villa-Lobos, like Copland, went to Paris during its glorious 1920s.) The Nashville Symphony under Kenneth Schermerhorn is workmanlike and sometimes more -- the cellos do not have the sheen that is often present when the big American orchestras cherry-pick these works, but the performers are comfortable within the modest orchestral dimensions of these pieces, and Schermerhorn avoids the overwrought quality they are sometimes given. The sound, in sessions recorded patchwork over some months in a university auditorium, is subpar, but the set will appeal to the growing body of listeners interested in orchestral music of the Americas. James Manheim