Echoes of Brazil’s rainforest often surface in the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos. The composer, a towering figure in the development of his homeland’s art music, evoked the vivacious chorus of tropical birdsong, chirping insects, and animal sounds for the final time in his Floresta do Amazonas (Forests of the Amazon). First performed shortly before his death in 1959, the work was rarely revived in concert, and its manuscript remained unpublished. It gained a fresh lease of life 60 years after its premiere, thanks to the Academia Brasilia de Musica and Italian Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes, who removed the original choral parts to create a magnificent multi-movement suite for symphony orchestra and soprano. Menezes has since introduced the revised work to audiences worldwide. Her recording of the Floresta suite, made with soloist Camila Provenzale and Philharmonia Zürich, and released to coincide with Latin Heritage Month, conjures up captivating images of a pristine paradise, untouched by industrial-scale deforestation. “This music is astonishing,” she tells Apple Music Classical. “Villa-Lobos combines elements of Stravinsky-like primitivism, the lyricism of Shostakovich, and epic music—a little bit like Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.” Floresta do Amazonas began life as soundtrack music for the 1959 Hollywood adventure romance Green Mansions. Villa-Lobos, unhappy at the film studio’s butchery of his original score, refashioned it into a hybrid of symphony and oratorio. He confessed that he was drawn to Green Mansions because its story concerned his “beloved South American forests,” a passion ignited over half a century earlier during the composer’s Amazon expeditions. “I think it’s a synthesis of all Villa-Lobos’ music,” suggests Simone Menezes. “Floresta contains almost every element from his earlier pieces, which he felt free to build into a great statement about the rainforests and Brazil’s culture. For me, it’s his masterpiece.” The suite’s power in performance, she adds, has been enhanced by projections of photographer Sebastião Salgado’s monochrome images of Amazonia’s increasingly endangered fauna and indigenous peoples. “The first time we played it in the Philharmonie de Paris, I saw the musicians were crying over this combination of images and music. I never saw that in a concert before.” The suite’s world-premiere recording gains from its coupling with an orchestral version of “Metamorphosis 1” from Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia, originally composed in the 1990s for the Brazilian instrumental group Uakti. “It was not easy to find a meaningful companion,” Simone Menezes recalls. “The Glass was perfect. ‘Metamorphosis 1’ feels like you’re in a boat going into Amazonia. It helps you breathe after this dense, almost tribal music of Villa-Lobos.” Menezes hopes her album will do for Foresta do Amazonas what Leonard Bernstein did in the early 1960s for the fifth of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas brasileiras. Bernstein’s inclusion of the latter in his televised Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and his subsequent recording, set it on course for global fame. “My feeling is that, for new listeners to classical music, this concert suite is ideal because of its almost visual impact. The Brazilian writer Mário de Andrade described Villa-Lobos as a composer of the ‘music of nature.’ Those colors and sounds are there for everyone in Floresta do Amazonas.”