Heitor Villa-Lobos (b.1887 in Rio de Janeiro – d. 1959 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), became the most esteemed Brazilian composer to date despite his humble beginnings and rebellion against parental expectations. His father, an amateur cellist, taught him cello and clarinet, and his mother hoped he would become a doctor. But Heitor was not interested in continuing school or pursuing a formal musical education. Instead, he taught himself guitar and as a teenager became a street musician in one of Rio’s ‘chôro’ bands, immersing into Brazil’s wealth of unique popular music. A decade long travelling throughout Brazil and collecting folk and traditional music, along with self-taught composition and experimentation with rhythm and harmony, contributed to the creation of his distinctive musical voice. While Brazilian critics were not gentle to his earlier works, he was well received in Europe. During his lengthy stay in Paris in the 1920s, where he met and was influenced by Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Prokofiev and Varèse, he achieved a level of acclaim unreached by any Latin-American composer. When he returned to Brazil in 1930, he came back as a celebrity in international music circles and as a national hero for his championing of Brazilian folk music and traditions through his work. His opus includes overall more than 2,000 works, diverse in form, but nearly all are inspired by a passionate devotion to his native land.

Assobio a Játo (Jet Whistle) for flute and cello, composed in 1950, is a prime example of Villa-Lobos’s extraordinary and colourful style. The composer surprises us with pairing of flute and cello’s contrasting range, timbre and texture. The two instruments are partners which exchange their lead and accompaniment roles or meet almost by chance while playing independently. In the course of three parts they bring a variety of nuanced moods. The first part, Allegro non troppo, brings an alternate flute and cello playing of folk-inspired melody in triple waltz meter. It is followed by a lyrical and chromatic Adagio in which a gentle flute melody weaves into at times dissonant cello counterpoint. The final Vivo brings a merciless rhythmic pattern by the cello, putting a flutist to a serious test of conquering scales, runs, trills and jet whistles, sounds outside of conventional techniques when flutists blow a fast, high-pressure air stream directly on the mouthpiece. The piece closes with the flute charging higher and faster with combined glissandos and jet whistle, creating an impression of a jet engine at take-off, just as Villa-Lobos intended.