Josinaldo Costa, Guitar
Throughout all periods of his life, Villa-Lobos was known for his charismatic personality. Slonimsky remarked how the composer that stated “I am Folklore!” was “well worth a trip to Rio to see. In fact, he is becoming a sort of national monument, visited by every newcomer.” He was “a gregarious and convivial person whose sharp mentality combined with candid sentimentality. He had many friends. Yet the hard facts of his life eluded even his most devoted admirers. It is doubtful whether Villa-Lobos himself was sure of his biography, for his power of imagination was richer than his memory. He did not even know in what year he was born.” This great conversationalist and story-teller appears at all times in his own music. Villa-Lobos’ writing desk was “cluttered up with manuscripts, notebooks, photographs and miscellaneous objects."
It is no surprise to find Villa-Lobos’ congeniality in all its variegated forms in his guitar music. There, one finds the brilliant combination of idiomatic writing, technical innovation and of the self-declared “sentimental” and “sugary” (Slonimsky, p. 218) of Villa-Lobos expansive temperament.
This album presents a significant portion of Villa-Lobos guitar music in commemoration of the 100 years of the Modern Art Week of 1922 in São Paulo, an event that propelled Villa-Lobos as the leading composer of the Brazilian modernist art movement.
Josinaldo Costa plays on a guitar of 1976 by Paul Fischer. Fischer had only recently left the legendary workshop of David Rubio when he built this instrument, a particularly beautiful representative of this true golden age of guitar making in England.
Release date: Feb 2022
Catalog n.: XE2201