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[8.573923] Images of Brazil (micro-trailer) - VILLA-LOBOS: The Moth around the Flame

147 views · Published 1 December 2018 · 1:01 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Naxos Music · 2018 · Music

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Thumbnail photo © Aline Mueller

This recording showcases the breadth and variety of Brazilian music by focusing on composers who explore traditional styles and use native forms, such as the bossa nova, chôro, frevo and samba, combined with neo-Romanticism, Modernism and jazz. Looking beyond cultural stereotypes, it includes Camargo Guarnieri’s grandly Romantic Violin Sonata No. 4 and a violin arrangement of one of Villa-Lobos’s most colourful character pieces, alongside contemporary works that explore nature painting, song, and the Carnival—offering an abundance of vibrancy, dance, languorous rhythms and joyful wit.

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Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 –1959): O Martírio dos Insetos (‘The Martyrdom of Insects’) (1925)

Heitor Villa-Lobos was the most well-known Brazilian composer of the 20th century and possibly the most influential Latin American composer to this day. He had an unconventional musical background, playing popular music with many bands in Rio de Janeiro and working as a cellist in orchestras and movie theatres. He was born into a transitional time in Brazil’s history, when a new interest in Brazilian nationalist music was emerging. Consequently, although his music was influenced by European styles, he primarily drew upon Brazilian forms. His piece O Martírio dos Insetos (‘The Martyrdom of Insects’) is a suite of character pieces for violin and orchestra (here, in an arrangement for violin and piano by Ricardo Averbach) that reveals Villa-Lobos’s interest in natural subjects and also a dark humour. The first movement, A cigarra no Inverno (The Cicada in Winter’), features a mournful melody in half steps, representing the dying cicada, punctuated by wild, florid passages in the violin. Dissonant and strident trills erupt from the violin, followed by a reprise of the cicada’s lament. The second movement, O Vagalume na Claridade (‘The Firefly in the Light’), depicts the darting movements of the firefly with tremolos and accents in the violin. Finally, in the last movement, Mariposa na luz (‘The Moth around the Flame’), the fluttering wings of the moth are represented by perpetually flowing sextuplets in the violin, in a Brazilian noir version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee.

Album release date: December 2018

View album info: https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.573923

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