LDV119

19 WILHEM LATCHOUMIA On the basis of your experience of twentieth-century music, where do you think Villa-Lobos’s piano style comes from? Debussy and Stravinsky are undoubtedly the source of some of his works. I’m thinking in particular of O polichinelo , one of Artur Rubinstein’s favourite encore pieces, whose dizzying speed recalls some of the piano writing in Petrouchka . But the unbridled virtuosity so characteristic of Villa-Lobos’s style (his first wife was a pianist) also derives in part from his experience of the guitar: it was his favourite instrument, and he conceives simultaneous or arpeggiated chords like a guitarist, thus inventing a new way of appropriating the keyboard for his purposes.