Chôros No. 8 is a work for orchestra and two pianos, written in 1925 by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. It is part of a series of fourteen numbered compositions collectively titled Chôros, ranging from solos for guitar and for piano up to works scored for soloist or chorus with orchestra or multiple orchestras, and in duration up to over an hour. A recording of Chôros No. 8 conducted by the composer lasts 22 minutes. History Chôros No. 8 was composed in Rio de Janeiro in 1925, and the score is dedicated to the pianist Tomás Terán. It was premiered in Paris on 24 October 1927, at the Salle Gaveau, with the composer conducting the Orchestra of the Concerts Colonne and Aline van Barentzen and Tomás Terán, pianos. The first American performance took place on 12 April 1929 in Philadelphia, again with Barentzen and Terán playing the pianos, and the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Despite these documented performances, the year of composition has been called into question by one scholar, who asserts that the work was conceived in Paris in 1925, but completed only after the composer's return to Rio de Janeiro in 1930. The work was never performed in Latin America in the composer's lifetime. The first performance in Brazil took place in the context of a Villa-Lobos Festival at the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro on 23 November 1963, with Luiz Carlos de Moura Castro and Luiz Medalha, pianos, and the Orquestra Sinfônica Nacional, conducted by Isaac Karabtchevsky. Instrumentation Chôros No. 8 is scored for two pianos and an orchestra consisting of piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, tam-tam, tambourine, tamborim, snare drum, triangle, cymbals, 2 metal chocalhos (small and large), reco-reco, caracaxá, caraxá, puíta, ratchet, xylophone), celesta, 2 harps, and strings. Analysis At the time of its Paris premiere, this Chôros was called "Le fou huitième" (The Mad Eighth), for its extravagant scoring and unconventional performing techniques, as well as for its superimposition of multiple opposing rhythms and tonalities. It has been described as Villa-Lobos's most fauvist and "modern" composition from the 1920s, formally the most irregular, most violent, and "tropical" of all Villa-Lobos's works, whose leading feature is its almost complete atonality and dissonance. It has been claimed there is virtually nothing