From Salzburg to salsa: A world of inspiration

For music fans, the New World remains full of discoveries.

  When violinist Lavard Skou-Larsen and the Salzburg Chamber Soloists perform in Cabell Hall Auditorium to close this season’s Tuesday Evening Concert Series, listeners will hear South American works that serve a taste of European inspirations amid a whole banquet of new rhythms and sounds.

“I’m a Danish citizen, but my roots are in Brazil,” Skou-Larsen said. “We are a European orchestra from Austria, but I thought that maybe we would start the other way around — to start in South America with [Brazilian composer Heitor] Villa-Lobos and then go back to Europe.”

The program will move from Villa-Lobos’ “Bacchiana Brasileira No. 9” to W.A. Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat Major, KV 364” to Franz Haydn’s “Symphony in F minor, No. 4, ‘La Passione’ ’’ to Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla’s “Five Tangos.”

Villa-Lobos’ “Bacchiana Brasileira,” or “Brazilian Bach pieces,” reflect the composer’s admiration for J.S. Bach even while they put Brazilian folk tunes and elements in the spotlight.

The famous Mozart work was a special request for the program, and Skou-Larsen said he’ll be playing the viola solo part.

The Haydn symphony is marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death.

The Piazzolla selection is “a tango that one listens to, not a tango one dances to,” Skou-Larsen said. “Piazzolla founded tango nuevo, which was very heavily influenced by jazz.”

The work would be tricky to dance to, because it’s filled with hallmarks of Piazzolla’s tango nuevo style — complex rhythms, especially counterpoint.

Classical, jazz and traditional tango elements are easy to spot in the work, but it’s clear that the composer had come up with something completely new — and it’s an entertaining way to close a comprehensive concert program.

“It’s also important that you include the lighter music,” Skou-Larsen said.

Music by South American composers has been growing in popularity, and part of the appeal is its freshness to audiences accustomed to hearing the work of a handful of European masters.

“In Europe, most of the music, if it has not been hidden in a monastery, it has been played,” Skou-Larsen said.

Skou-Larsen said that the Villa-Lobos work is particularly well received by American audiences. Part of the charm is the refreshing use of percussive techniques that provide “some special effects in the strings,” Skou-Larsen said, but that’s not the whole story.

“There’s a lot of American language,” he said. “You can feel that it’s American music.

“In Europe, it [the reaction] is a little bit mixed. In Latin countries, they like it more. It is a very good opener for the concert.”

On Tuesday evening, the Salzburg Chamber Soloists’ award-winning CDs will be available.

The performers will stay to present a children’s concert, which is underwritten by the Anne Stevens and Cameron Waterman III Fund in the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation.

Skou-Larsen said he enjoys performing for young audiences, whose refreshing responses to the music always remind him why he works so hard in the first place.

“The young people and the young musicians are so enthusiastic, and sometimes you miss this when you have been in orchestras for many years,” Skou-Larsen said.

Parking areas recommended for Tuesday’s concert are the Central Grounds parking garage and the stadium parking garage, which offers free University of Virginia bus service.