Villa-Lobos - String Quartet No. 15

String Quartet No. 15, A. 523 (1954) I. Allegro non troppo II. Moderato III. Scherzo, vivo IV. Allegro Cuarteto Latinoamericano There are, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, some geniuses who want only to beget and others who want to be fructified and to give birth; the former masters her ideas, instrumentalizes and actualizes them while the latter gives in to them, as if she were a mere channeler holding séances for her own imagination. In this albeit partial perspective, Heitor Villa-Lobos is definitely the latter type of artist -- a joyous supplicant to the untiring fecundity of his own ideas. This can be heard in many works, but especially in some of the "late works," like the String Quartet No. 15 from 1954, written just four years before the composer's death. From its rapt beginning illuminated by string harmonics, yawning registral gaps, and a stunningly simple undulating pattern in 4/2, the score declares itself the happy victim of one inspiration after another. The composer, always a confident writer, seems to re-inaugurate that confidence here, effortlessly traveling from one delightful sonic vista to another. In other composers, this might not work at all, and there are other quartets of Villa-Lobos that don't have the conviction of this one. After all, "bad" composition is, to some extent, synonymous with avoiding development and giving oneself over to the easy beauty of the moment. But the beauty of the moment isn't as easy as its detractors would imagine, and when it is applied as consistently as Villa-Lobos -- changing texture and pattern almost every four bars like a four-voice film montage -- it tends to attain its own unifying gravity and almost becomes a kind of mastering method. Imagine a kaleidoscope, shifting its lovely patterns with an apparent whimsy that is later revealed to be a carefully calculated slight of hand. The opening movement eventually trades its lucid, mobile-like beginnings for a more chromatic middle section full of the composer's vagaroso writing, rhapsodic and cyclic in its snaking lyricism. The coda, often one of the most exciting sections in a Villa-Lobos quartet, does not disappoint here: rather than providing a summary, it willfully violates rhetorical expectations and leaves the rest of the movement behind; its erupting volley of repeated sixteenth notes is perhaps nodding to Villa-Lobos' distant contemporary Dmitry Shostakovich. The following slow movement is one of the greatest in all the composer's quartets, the true heart of fructified invention; its ideas, each magically evocative and texturally fragile, arise with strange determination, as if planted on a slowly rotating wheel. [allmusic.com] Art by Lisa Milroy

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Heitor Villa-Lobos - String Quartet No. 15, III-IV

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Heitor Villa-Lobos - String Quartet No. 15, I-II