Ralph White wrote:

>How about some Peruvian composers from the Richard Strauss era? Anybody
>know anything about that?

The best of renowned Peruvian composers born after 1860 until 1800's
endings are basically self-taught musicians (for a lack of serious music
schools; the national conservatoire was founded at 1946!) only excluding
two or three with european studies and they wrote for the piano mostly.
Their works are in more of cases, with a closer influence to Schumann or
Chopin styles, many times adding folk tunes and in other reworking them
inside european dances (valses, polkas, mazurkas).  This is an obscure
musical era to my knowledge yet because there are not much works played and
recorded here in Peru.  But, I can mention at least four important names
among them: Jose Maria Valle-Riestra (1858-1925), the best composer with
academic studies; Daniel Alomia Robles (1871-1942), ambitious collector of
peruvian tunes (more of 600) and the author of the popular piece "El condor
pasa" (the condor passes) ;and for last, Manuel Aguirre (1863-1951) and
Luis Duncker Lavalle (1874-1922) the best composers for the piano in Peru
at nineteenth century.  There are two CDs containing piano works from these
musicians on Alma Musik label, those are a good starting point for the
listener.

Regards,

Mauricio Veliz Cartagena
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