It’s also impossible to do justice to it (the playing of the São Paulo Orchestra is excellent) or the range of its content. Generally, the Choros, originally street music or serenades for any particular combination of instruments but expanded by Villa-Lobos sometimes to include voices, fare better in inverse proportion to their length and scoring,

The shorter ones for a smaller combination of instruments are charming and inventive, although there’s not much “jungle” music. The longest, No. 11, composed for Artur Rubinstein of all people, seems, at more than an hour, interminable, and like many of the other longer pieces, sounds like the score to a third-rate film where Yma Sumac is dragged to a volcano as a human sacrifice, amid a few eight octave leaps. The Bachianas Brasileiras generally fare better. No. 5 for soprano and cellos and the toccata from No 2 The Little Train of the Caipira are the only pieces of this vast oeuvre at all known.

The Bachianas really do reveal a high level of inspiration throughout and I most enjoyed the samba/bossa nova touches.