The coronavirus pandemic of the early 2020s brought forth a certain amount of material from the vaults as recording companies sought to keep to release schedules. There's no direct evidence that that happened on this Naxos release, but all of the material was recorded between 2009 and 2015, and it likely was seen as having, to borrow a phrase from Frank Zappa, no commercial potential. The term "American" in the title is to be taken in the broad sense, for the largest work on the program, the Cantata para América Mágica, Op. ...
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The coronavirus pandemic of the early 2020s brought forth a certain amount of material from the vaults as recording companies sought to keep to release schedules. There's no direct evidence that that happened on this Naxos release, but all of the material was recorded between 2009 and 2015, and it likely was seen as having, to borrow a phrase from Frank Zappa, no commercial potential. The term "American" in the title is to be taken in the broad sense, for the largest work on the program, the Cantata para América Mágica, Op. 27, of Alberto Ginastera, is South American. That is as intense a specimen of post-Schoenbergian vocal modernism as one could find, with 16 players performing on 53 percussion instruments and pre-Columbian texts placed tensely at the very top of the register of soprano Signe Asmussen. In this work, and really in all four, the figure of Schoenberg looms large, although the Koncherto por la violino kun perkuta orkestro (1959, with an Esperanto title spelled variously even in the...
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