VILLA-LOBOS. (a) Invocacao em defeza da Patria. (b) Descobrimento do Brasil. (c) ChOros No. 10. Maria Kareska (soprano—a), Chorale des Jeunesses Musicales de France (a, c), Chorus (a) and Orchestra (a, c) of the French National Radio conducted by Heitor Villa-Lobos. Columbia Q FCX602-3 (two 12 in., 64s. 11d. plus 18s. lld P.T.). These records are available to special order only from EMI Specialist Import Dealers.

Admirers of that incredibly fertile, undisciplined and complex genius VillaLobos will not be deterred by the fact that this issue is obtainable only to special order; for it contains a superb performance of one of his major large-scale works, the Discovery of Brazil. It was originally written for the soundtrack of a film in 1937, depicting the Portuguese voyage of discovery in 1500 and the first settlement in Brazil; its basis was a famous letter to King Manuel by Pero Vaz de Caminha, the notary of the fleet. Certainly as a film score it richly deserves the encomiums which were showered upon it, for its fecundity of invention, atmospheric colouring and brilliant orchestration are extremely striking (how the makers of today's film epics would have competed for Villa-Lobos !) ; and though the work now exists as a series of four symphonic suites, it is as illustrative music that it makes its effect. As usual, the composer drew his material from a diversity of sources—old Portuguese songs and dances, Spanish rhythms, Moorish music, plainsong, and Indian folk chants—from which (again characteristically) he attempted to make a synthesis. One of the most striking effects occurs in the final movement, The First Mass in Brazil, which combines men's voices singing parts of the Mass (whose text Villa-Lobos treated as arbitrarily as he treated numbers in his Nonet and Quartet) in Gregorian chant with women's voices in a barbaric Indian chant in the Guarany language. But outside such special experiments there is much that is original, as for instance the depiction of the rattlesnakes of the jungles, and beautiful, like the long Introduction. Though, inevitably, the work is patchy, the abundance of ideas and resource would keep most other composers going for three or four large works.

The Invocation for the defence of the motherland is an occasional piece written in 1943 for the departure for the war of Brazilian naval forces, and was first performed by a choir of 15,000 schoolchildren on Brazilian Independence Day. (The numbers here are, needless to say, reduced, and an orchestral accompaniment is added.) The Cho'ros No. 10, which is the only work of these three to have been previously issued on records here (twelve years ago), dates from 1926 and represents, in the composer's own words, "the reaction of a civilised man face to face with the valleys of the Amazon and the vast interiors". Of immense complexity and technical difficulty, and with a wealth of novel and exotic sonorities, combining native themes, incantational rhythms, savage shouted syllables and a Brazilian popular song (Rasga o corayao), it conjures up an evocative picture of the mystery of Villa-Lobos's beloved native land. Chorus and orchestra perform valiantly, and the recording engineers, though apparently a little nervous of the hugest climaxes, have done a very good job; but works of this magnitude imperatively demand stereo.

L.S.