Description
Although Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)never had any children of his own, the world of infancy has always been a powerful inspiration for his works. Children-inspired scoresspread through his whole output, from some of the earliest examples we listen to in this volume until his last opera, A Menina das Nuves (The Girl of the Clouds), finished in 1958 and posthumously premiered in 1960. In addition to this, this recording also pays tribute to Villa-Lobos' outstanding achievement as a musical educator in Brazil, by displaying the whole lot of Guia Prático (Practical Guide), that perhaps might be seen as a kind of a Brazilian response to Hungarian Béla Bartók's Mikrokosmos. There is a degree of technical skills required to play these pieces – like Debussy's Children's Corner, or Schumann's Kindreszenen, they are children-inspired, but not child-oriented.