HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS (1887-1959): Complete Violin Sonatas - No. 1 “Désespérance”, No. 2 “Fantasia” and No. 3.

Description: These sonatas date from a key period in Villa-Lobos’ career: the moment at which he matured as a composer, established his personal idiom and achieved his first professional triumphs. Each sonata shares some influence from French late Romanticism or Impressionism, as well as revealing Villa-Lobos’s skill as a string player. From 1912, the first sonata’s subtitle of Désespérance (‘Despair’) suits its melancholy lyricism, while the ‘infinite abundance of musical ideas’ in the Second (1914) is characterized by a wide range of emotions. The sophisticated Third of 1920 is steeped in the influence of Debussy, but also anticipates Villa-Lobos’s new directions in the 1920s. Emmanuele Baldini (violin), Pablo Rossi (piano).