ALBERTO GINASTERA: Cello Concerto No. 1; Cello Concerto No. 2. Aurora Natola-Ginastera, cello /Orquesta sinfonica de Castilla y Leon /Max Bragado Darman – Pierian 0034 ***: [Distrib. by Albany]
Alberto Ginastera (1916-83) is best known to audiophiles for his colorfully scored ballet suites Panambi and Estancia. These ballets integrated indigenous folk music of Argentina into Ginastera’s own objective nationalist style. The folk-influenced effects used by the composer include polytonality, rhythmic effects and the chord of the open strings of the guitar. By 1950 Ginastera started embracing elements of 12-tone techniques. These two cello concertos from 1968 (revised in 1978) and 1981 represent the composer’s venture into integrating 12-tone and serial techniques for dramatic, ritualistic and expressive effect while maintaining the earlier characteristics of nervous rhythmic energy and ostinati (repetition of melodic phrases). They are dramatic and virtuosic in a framework of a modern and often atonal orchestral framework.
The First Cello Concerto starts with a lyrical cello line against a backdrop of orchestral drama. The nervous, frenetic and percussive opening and ending of the scherzo is framed by a quiet, lyrical central section. The last movement starts with serial tone clusters, dramatic and astringent in its emotional effect. Then there is a transition to a lyrical, quiet ending with the cello playing on a single sustained pitch. The work’s tonal variety and instrumental creativity makes for challenging listening.
The Second Cello Concerto is impressionistic and is written for his wife, Aurora Natola-Ginastera who is the excellent cellist on this recording. The four movements are each prefaced by words of famous poets singing to the “Aurora.” The first is a musical transformation from dawn to the colors of the sun using ostinati, ending in a radiant “Hymn to the Sun.” The Scherzo brought the images of a ghost flitting about on a breeze whispering sweet nothings to this reviewer – very beguiling. The cellist writes of the third movement, “Through the night of luminous moons and iridescent clouds, an impassioned five-part dialogue emerges, songs veiled in the whispers of the distant jungle.” It’s the most beautiful music of the disc. The last movement is a percussive and ritualistic explosion of a festival.
The sound is close, and transparent which allows the orchestral detail to emerge clearly. This is a disc for those who are familiar with the Ginastera oeuvre and want to explore his later works.
— Robert Moon
