The chamber works and songs of Alberto Ginastera on this 2005 Orfeo release fall into three categories, as defined by the composer. Danzas argentinas for piano, Op. 2 (1937), as well as Dos canciones, Op. 3 (1938) and Cinco canciones populares argentinas, Op. 10 (1937), both for voice and piano, are in Ginastera's "objective nationalist" style, a straightforward manner of setting the gauchos' songs with comparatively little invention or decoration. Pampeana No. 1 for violin and piano, Op. 16 (1947), and Pampeana No. 2 for ...
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The chamber works and songs of Alberto Ginastera on this 2005 Orfeo release fall into three categories, as defined by the composer. Danzas argentinas for piano, Op. 2 (1937), as well as Dos canciones, Op. 3 (1938) and Cinco canciones populares argentinas, Op. 10 (1937), both for voice and piano, are in Ginastera's "objective nationalist" style, a straightforward manner of setting the gauchos' songs with comparatively little invention or decoration. Pampeana No. 1 for violin and piano, Op. 16 (1947), and Pampeana No. 2 for cello and piano, Op. 21 (1950), are rhapsodies on Argentinean themes in Ginastera's "subjective nationalist" vein, and show his growing freedom in adapting folk material to a more sophisticated, modernist idiom. The masterful Sonata for cello and piano, Op. 49 (1979), represents Ginastera's longest period, the "neo-Expressionist," atonal-dodecaphonic phase that lasted from 1958 to the composer's death in 1983. Yet even in this final style, Ginastera exhibits much of the passion...
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