By the 1940s Heitor Villa-Lobos was widely recognised as Latin America’s greatest composer. Working in the United States gave him new perspectives, and his later symphonies move away from the folk influences and exotic effects of works written in the 1920s and 30s, such as the Bachianas Brasileiras, towards more concise, sometimes neo-classical, models. The Eighth and Ninth share a transparent lightness of touch while the Eleventh, described as a work of ‘immediate charm’, is the perfect introduction to the later work of Villa-Lobos.