Presto Recordings of the Year
Finalist 2023

Camila Provenzale, Philharmonia Zurich, Simone Menezes

Villa-Lobos: Floresta do Amazonas, W 551
Glass, P: Metamorphosis I

Two Brazilian artists pay tribute to Villa-Lobos and the Amazon rainforest... Sebastiao Salgado is a world-renowned photographer who has been working since the 1990s to protect and restore the Atlantic forest and water resources of the Rio Doce valley in Brazil. The Italian-Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes is passionate about the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and his symphonic poem Floresta do Amazonas, for which she created a suite for large orchestra and soprano. Together they travel the world to present an exhibition of Salgado's photographs, combined with concerts conducted by Simone in which the photographs are projected, the photographer having associated each musical phrase with one of his images... The music of this monumental project has been recorded with the Philharmonia Zurich and soprano Camila Provenzale. Ten photos by Salgado, each more striking than the last, are included in the booklet that accompanies this recording, which is completed by another tribute to Amazonian nature, by Philip Glass, with an extract from his Aguas da Amazonia.

"even in this abridged version it is hard to resist the scope of the work and its moments of intense beauty particularly in the vocal movements, rapturously sung by Camila Provenzale – while stylistically it encapsulates much of the history of music in the first half of the 20th century in a very distinctive way." - "The Guardian, 30th September 2023