Alberto Ginastera
      Chamber Music, vol. 5

*  Cantos del Tucuman
*  Danza del Trigo
*  Estancia: Triste Pampeano
*  Guitar Sonata
*  Punena No. 2
*  Duo for flute and oboe
*  Danza Criolla (arr. Barbosa-Lima)
*  Milonga (arr. Mercado)
*  Impresiones de la Puna

Olivia Blackburn (soprano), Anna Noakes (flute), David Emanuel (violin),
Gillian Tingay (harp), Gary Kettel (percussion), Lyric String Quartet, John
Anderson (oboe), Christopher van Kampen (cello), Maria Isabel Siewers
(guitar), Rafael Gintoli (violin)
ASV CD DCA 1103 Total time: 59:07

Summary for the Busy Executive: Music that should be better known.

Most critics, if not the general public, now consider Argentinean
Alberto Ginastera (pronounced by him "JEAN-a-STAIR-a," rather than
"HEEN-a-STAIR-a"; the name is Italian, not Spanish) the best composer
Latin America has so far produced.  Ginastera had his success early,
with the ballet Estancia, which probably remains his most popular piece.
His output falls into three periods: pre-Estancia; an application of
Bartok's approach to folklore to create a nationalist Argentinean music;
dodecaphony and beyond.  Among critics, his greatest notice came in the
Sixties to about 1971, with the premieres of his first piano concerto
and the Expressionist operas Don Rodrigo, Bomarzo, and Beatrix Cenci,
after which interest seemed to diminish, although he still got prestigious
commissions.

Like Stravinsky, Ginastera worked very slowly and very carefully.  I
admit to losing interest around the time of Beatrix Cenci (which - in
the interest of full disclosure - I confess I haven't heard).  I love
his overtly nationalist phase, but some of his last period disappointed
me, perhaps because he didn't give me another Variaciones Concertantes
or First Piano Concerto.  However, even in works that leave me cold, I
have to admit his craft.

This CD gives us Ginastera early, middle, and late.  The Cantos del
Tucuman, written at 22 for soprano, flute, violin, harp, and two Indian
drums, shows us the beauty and precision of Ginastera's sonic imagination.
The idiom differs from the one you think of when Ginastera's name pops
up, closer to writers like Ravel and Roussel, rather than to Stravinsky
or Bartok.  Nevertheless, the songs haunt you.  The Indian drums especially
fascinate.  I regard this as one of the composer's most purely gorgeous
works.

As I may have already implied, I view at least some of late Ginastera
as a falling-off.  The pieces are never badly written, but they occasionally
seem obligatory, something to fill a commission, rather than a necessary
expression of some artistic need - the 1976 Punena No. 2 for solo cello,
for example, written at the request of Rostropovich to celebrate conductor
and patron Paul Sacher's 70th birthday.  It works out a theme based on
Sacher's name - Eb (eS)/A/C/B (H, in the German notational system)/E/D
("re") - and that to me sums up its entire interest.  The guitar sonata
from the same year, however, counts as a happy exception.  Indeed, I
can't think of a better or more substantial guitar work other than the
Bach lute suites or the Dowland fantasias.  The sonata seems to get at
the "soul" of the instrument, and the sound of the strummed open strings
dominates the piece.  The scherzo, a brilliant, mercurial phantasmagoria
of half-lights and shades incorporates Beckmesser's "Laud" from
Meistersinger.  What is, after all, a crude joke at someone's expense
in the original becomes a beautiful, poetic thing in Ginastera's hands.
It's the music in Beckmesser's soul, rather than the music he actually
could write.

The Duo for flute and oboe (1945) mines a lot of music from very small
forces.  Ginastera even manages to get a fugue going in the last movement.
If the players work it right, they can achieve the illusion of more than
two parts from two melody instruments.  The slow movement - like most
of Ginastera's slow movements - seems to express the essence of solitude,
someone alone with their thoughts.

The Impresiones de la Puna for flute and string quartet Ginastera never
officially owned to.  He considered it a student work. It may not have
the snap or elegance of the mature composer, but it's a lovely work,
very Impressionistic - indeed, more so than the Cantos del Tucuman.  I'm
happy it's recorded.

Transcriptions for the guitar of other works, including Estancia, round
out the disc.  They're nice and guitarists looking for material would
do well to take them up.  However, I do prefer the originals.

The performers do well, with soprano Olivia Blackburn in the Cantos and
guitarist Maria Isabel Siewers in the sonata making a stronger impression.
Blackburn's voice gets inside you.  Siewers goes beyond overcoming the
sonata's significant technical difficulties and begins to shape the
poetry.  The disc mixes what I would call Pleasant Listening with demands
on your full attention, so the program strikes me as a bit odd.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Steve Schwartz