In 1940 Villa-Lobos gained a certain notoriety with his New York Skyline, whose theme was derived from a charted panoramic view of the city. Four years later he applied the same procedure in his Sixth Symphony, this time taking his cue from the contours of the mountains of Brazil. Whatever its cartographical value, this musically inconsequential jagged outline strikes me as providing an unconvincing basis for the flatulent first movement, in which the Slovak musicians are worked like Trojans to very little effect. There is a far more musical impulse in the succeeding Lento, which initially has tranquil solo lines against a background of sighing and swooping string glissandos, but which develops into an atmosphere of heated intensity. The rumbustious scherzo and noisy finale (each lightened only momentarily by lyrical passages) have the composer thrashing about in a boisterously exhibitionist way. I can’t say that I feel drawn to make much further acquaintance with this work.
Quite different, freed from mechanistic devices, is Ruda, written in 1951 as an Amerindian ballet for La Scala but in fact not performed there and only heard three years later when played on French radio. It is a large-scale composition inspired by the idea of the primitive power of the god of love, as exemplified among the Mayas, Aztecs, Incas and Marajoaras. Such a subject was right up Villa-Lobos’s street, affording him boundless opportunities for compulsive rhythms, misterioso passages, lushly lyric episodes (there is one in the Inca movement and another, somewhat Ravelian, for the Mayas), exotic melodic lines and, in places, wonderfully original instrumentation. (I believe the score includes a part for the Sonovox, but I was unable to detect it in the general melee.) It’s a fascinating and utterly characteristic work, tirelessly inventive.
The Slovak violins don’t always sound entirely sure-footed in the extreme heights to which they are often dispatched, but in general the orchestra do well, and the Marco Polo recording copes very successfully with containing the sometimes colossal climaxes.'