Vol 6 of Sonia Rubinsky’s cycle of Villa-Lobos’s piano music contains two world premiere recordings and, even more enterprisingly, ranges far and wide through the composer’s vast output. Like tropical forests, Villa-Lobos’s writing expanded and blossomed, covering a wild variety of idioms and styles; most exotic, some plain-speaking, some indelibly ethnic, others more cosmopolitan, all of them the fruit of his ceaselessly active mind and imagination.

Naturally, given such fecundity, it would be surprising if the quality of his work was consistent and although the hugely ambitious Rudepoêma, which strays onto alien Stravinskian territory, is much admired, it is hard work reconciling oneself to its length and intricacy. In extreme contrast, As Três Marias and Saudades das Selvas Brasileiras are far more immediately appealing, and so too is the Valsa d’A menina das nuvens where Villa-Lobos takes us to Paris rather than Rio. The many children’s pieces are alive with ingenuous ideas, spiced and enlivened by natty harmony and rhythmic syncopation, and all this music is played with unfailing sympathy and, in the case of the daunting Rudepoêma, with all the requisite virtuosity. Warmly recorded, this volume in this special series makes one look forward eagerly to Vol 7.