Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Mazourka–Choro arranged for theorbo скачать в хорошем качестве

Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Mazourka–Choro arranged for theorbo

Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Mazourka–Choro stands at the crossroads of his early musical identity—shaped equally by European salon culture and by the vibrant world of Rio de Janeiro’s chorões. Although trained as a cellist in childhood, Villa-Lobos largely taught himself the guitar, the instrument that led him into Rio’s informal musical circles. As a young man he played in cafés, cinemas, and nightclubs, improvising alongside the chorões, absorbing their rhythmic vitality, melodic turns, and improvisatory freedom. The Suite populaire brésilienne emerged from this environment, though it was never conceived as a unified composition. Over many years Villa-Lobos wrote numerous small guitar pieces—sketches, dances, salon miniatures—some of which he later assembled into the suite. The first movement, Mazourka–Choro, reflects the mixture of influences that shaped his youth: the mazurka, a fashionable European dance common in Brazilian salons of the late 19th century, and choro, the expressive urban style that animated Rio’s streets. When Villa-Lobos prepared the suite for publication in 1928–29, while staying with friends in Lussac-les-Châteaux, he dedicated Mazourka–Choro to Maria Thereza Terán, the wife of Spanish pianist Tomás Terán. This preliminary version remained unpublished due to political upheavals and the composer’s long absence from Paris; when he later reconstructed the suite from memory and sketches, the dedication to Maria Thereza was preserved. In Mazourka–Choro, one hears the composer’s lifelong project in miniature: the meeting of tradition and invention, street and salon, Brazil and Europe. The music gently reshapes the graceful triple-meter sway of the mazurka through the syncopated inflections and expressive phrasing of choro, producing a hybrid style that belongs to neither world entirely. Played on the theorbo, the piece takes on an unexpected historical resonance. The long bass strings add depth and warmth, enriching the rhythmic pulse and giving the melodic lines a subtly nostalgic glow—like hearing a familiar Brazilian tune through the resonant timbre of an instrument centuries older. It becomes at once exotic and intimate, a poetic meeting of eras, continents, and musical cultures. Played by Andrej Jovanić.