String Quartet No. 15 (Villa-Lobos)


String Quartet No. 15 is one of a series of seventeen works in the medium by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, and was written in 1954. A performance lasts approximately nineteen minutes.

History

Villa-Lobos composed his Fifteenth Quartet in 1954, working on it at the Tamanaco Hotel in Caracas, Venezuela and completing the score in New York. It was first performed by the Juilliard String Quartet on 19 April 1958 in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., as part of the Inter-American Festival of Music. The score is dedicated to the New Music String Quartet "após a leitura excepcional desse quarteto na residência dos Embaixadores A. Berle em New York".

Analysis

Like most of Villa-Lobos's works in this medium, the quartet consists of the traditional four movements:
  1. Allegro non troppo
  2. Moderato
  3. Scherzo
  4. Allegro
The final, Allegro movement opens with a fugato section, with the voices entering at the unusual intervals of a seventh, a third, and a fourth above the first statement in the cello.

Discography

Chronological, in order of recording dates.
  • Villa-Lobos: Quatuors a Cordes Nos. 15/16/17. Quatuor Bessler-Reis. Recorded at Studios Master in Rio de Janeiro, August–November 1988. CD recording, 1 disc: digital, 12 cm, stereo. Le Chant du Monde LDC 278 948. :, 1989.
  • * Also issued as part of Villa-Lobos: Os 17 quartetos de cordas / The 17 String Quartets. Quarteto Bessler-Reis and Quarteto Amazônia. CD recording, 6 sound discs: digital, 12 cm, stereo. Kuarup Discos KCX-1001. Rio de Janeiro: Kuarup Discos, 1996.
  • Heitor Villa-Lobos: String Quartets Nos. 3, 10 and 15. Danubius Quartet. Recorded at the Rottenbiller Street Studio in Budapest, 15–19 June and 1–2 July 1992. CD recording, 1 disc: digital, 12 cm, stereo. Marco Polo 8.223393. A co-production with Records International. Germany: HH International, Ltd., 1993.
  • Villa-Lobos: String Quartets, Volume 3. Quartets Nos. 7 and 15. Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Recorded at the Sala Nezahualcóyotl in Mexico City, September 1996. Music of Latin American Masters. CD recording, 1 disc: digital, 12 cm, stereo. Dorian DOR-90246. Troy, NY: Dorian Recordings, 1997.
  • * Reissued as part of Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Complete String Quartets. 6 CDs + 1 DVD with a performance of Quartet No. 1 and interview with the Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Dorian Sono Luminus. DSL-90904. Winchester, VA: Sono Luminus, 2009.
  • * Also reissued on Brilliant Classics 6634.

Filmography

Villa-Lobos: A integral dos quartetos de cordas. Quarteto Radamés Gnattali ; presented by Turibio Santos. Recorded from June 2010 to September 2011 at the Palácio do Catete, Palácio das Laranjeiras, and the Theatro Municipal, Rio de Janeiro. DVD and Blu-ray, 3 discs. Rio de Janeiro: Visom Digital, 2012.

Cited sources

*