Uploaded September 2010 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
"I love to write quartets. One would say that it is a mania." Heitor Villa-Lobos made this confession, quoted by Pierre Vidal, in Paris in the spring of 1958. He had completed his seventeenth and final quartet the year before and had begun to sketch an eighteenth. Villa-Lobos attributed his knowledge of the string quartet to his study of Haydn.
The period from 1917 to 1931 saw the creation of major orchestral works, among them Uirapu, Amazonas and the six orchestral Choros. Much of that time was spent in Paris, where Villa-Lobos came in contact with Ravel, Dukas, Falla, Schmitt, Honegger, Stravinsky, Prokofieff, Casella and Varèse. His return to the string quartet in 1931 produced one isolated example, the fifth, or "Quartetto Popular No. 1," among the most immediately appealling of all Villa-Lobos's quartets and at the same time one of the most inventive. Its firm tonal sense and clearly drawn melodies, some of popular origin, coexist with extraordinary creativity and imagination. Departing from the composer's usual and simpler tenary pattern, the quartet's first movement consists of seven parts, arranged to suggest an overall tripartite structure. The second movement (presented in this installment) borders on the miraculous [we agree]. To begin, it quotes the first part of a nursery tune, "cai, cai baiao," in dazzling fashion with descending scales and polyrhythms. Modulation from F major to d minor brings a soulful melody (foreshadowed in the first movement right after the modinha), while fantastic sul ponticello effects and swirling figurations screate an air or profound mystery.
The Danubius Quartet was established in 1983 under the artistic direction of the distinguished violinst Vilmos Tatrai, and has won awards in Trapani, Evian and Graz.
"I love to write quartets. One would say that it is a mania." Heitor Villa-Lobos made this confession, quoted by Pierre Vidal, in Paris in the spring of 1958. He had completed his seventeenth and final quartet the year before and had begun to sketch an eighteenth. Villa-Lobos attributed his knowledge of the string quartet to his study of Haydn.
The period from 1917 to 1931 saw the creation of major orchestral works, among them Uirapu, Amazonas and the six orchestral Choros. Much of that time was spent in Paris, where Villa-Lobos came in contact with Ravel, Dukas, Falla, Schmitt, Honegger, Stravinsky, Prokofieff, Casella and Varèse. His return to the string quartet in 1931 produced one isolated example, the fifth, or "Quartetto Popular No. 1," among the most immediately appealling of all Villa-Lobos's quartets and at the same time one of the most inventive. Its firm tonal sense and clearly drawn melodies, some of popular origin, coexist with extraordinary creativity and imagination. Departing from the composer's usual and simpler tenary pattern, the quartet's first movement consists of seven parts, arranged to suggest an overall tripartite structure. The second movement (presented in this installment) borders on the miraculous [we agree]. To begin, it quotes the first part of a nursery tune, "cai, cai baiao," in dazzling fashion with descending scales and polyrhythms. Modulation from F major to d minor brings a soulful melody (foreshadowed in the first movement right after the modinha), while fantastic sul ponticello effects and swirling figurations screate an air or profound mystery.
The Danubius Quartet was established in 1983 under the artistic direction of the distinguished violinst Vilmos Tatrai, and has won awards in Trapani, Evian and Graz.
