Heitor Villa-Lobos, Choro No 1, for guitar

Choro ("cry" or "lament") is a Brazilian musical form that probably emerged in the mid-1870s in Rio de Janeiro. Despite its name, it is characterized by an agitated and happy rhythm, requiring great technique and instruments mastery. From the cycle of fifteen choros that the prolific Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote for several instruments, the only guitar composition is the first of all, Choro No. 1.

Like some great composers (Brahms, for example) Villa-Lobos made a living as a young man playing in taverns of his hometown, Rio de Janeiro, where he came into this world in 1887. The son of an amateur musician from whom he received his first lessons, Heitor delighted the parishioners with the cello, although, if circumstances required, he could also play the guitar, clarinet or piano.

The first steps in his musical training take place completely outside the official institutions, about which he did not have a good opinion, to the point of having once expressed: "set foot in the academy and you will change for the worse". According to some scholars, Heitor was the son of an indigenous mother, which would explain his everlasting interest in ethno-musical travel, occasions in which he delved deep into the jungle of the north-eastern states of Brazil to soak up the folk music of those territories.

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 - 1959)

However, upon returning from the first of his trips, he enrolled at the National Institute of Music in Rio de Janeiro. But it would be the traditional songs of the Indians of the Amazon jungle that would exert a decisive influence in the conformation of his style, completely separated from academic conventions, and rather oriented to recreate with European-Western instruments the melodies and rhythms that he heard in the Amazon.

In 1915, at the age of 28, he decided to give a concert in Rio with just music of his own authorship, which was not much appreciated due, on the one hand, to the conservatism of the audience and, on the other, to the novelty of his compositions.

However, a few years later, the Brazilian government will award him with a professional improvement scholarship in Paris. Upon his return, he was entrusted with the formation of music education in Rio de Janeiro, with which a second stage in his musical life begins, that of a pedagogue. Together, his music began to receive international recognition. The world will later be amazed by vast work. Around two thousand compositions make up his catalog, among which Choros and Bachianas Brasileiras stand out, as well as concertos for various instruments, symphonies, chamber music, ballet, pieces for piano and many others.

Talented guitarist David Russell plays for us Choro No 1.