Amazônia Villa-Lobos: Suite Floresta do Amazonas*; Philip Glass: Metamorphosis 1 *Camila Provenzale (soprano); Philharmonia Zurich/Simone Menezes Alpha Classics ALPHA990 61:13 mins
You’d think it would be impossible to ignore the wildfires and creeping temperatures, but somehow we’re managing it: according to the WWF, the Amazon is now at an irreversible tipping point – deforestation in 2022 was three times higher than 2017. Since 2019, a cross-genre project combining photographs and Villa-Lobos’s symphonic poem Forest of the Amazon has toured cities around the world, attempting to remind audiences of the importance of Earth’s essential biodiversity; Amazônia the recording can now do that with a smaller carbon footprint. Villa-Lobos originally wrote the music as an orchestral piece for use in the scoring of Green Mansions, a 1959 Hollywood film staring Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins. Displeased by the production’s rehash, the Brazilian composer made his own bigger and better version – an oratorio with texts by poet Dora Vasconcellos. This new arrangement by Simone Menezes – here conducting the Philharmonia Zürich – preserves the epic scale of Villa-Lobos’s revised work, renosing it into a more practical 45-minute symphonic suite with soprano (Camila Provenzale: dreamily wistful in Canção do amor). The opening movement recalls Copland’s Billy the Kid – or even Britten’s Sea Interludes – in its evocative scene setting, with jolly percussion giving way to expansive string melodies. Movements such as Conspiração e dança guerreira and Melodia sentimental conjure the Amazon’s perrilous beauty. This is further reflected in Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis 1 from his Aguas da Amazonia, originally composed for the Brazilian group Uakti and orchestrated in 2017 by Charles Coleman. In typical Glass style, the piece builds tension through repetition.
Claire Jackson