Music: The Cries, the Carnivals

This is "VillaLobos Week"—according to the U.S. League of Composers, which is celebrating the first North American visit of South America's best-known composer: plump, talkative, 57-year-old Heitor Villa-Lobos. It is also the bouncy Brazilian's second week of Manhattan performances and the halfway point in his U.S. schedule of guest-conducting (Los Angeles' Janssen Symphony, Manhattan's Philharmonic, Stokowski's New York City Symphony, the Boston Symphony).

Thus far, besides treating several thousand music lovers to samples of his 1,500-odd works, Villa-Lobos has acquired an ecstatic admiration for tall buildings and vanilla ice cream. In the...