The music of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera has never fit the various agendas of 20th century composition, and has been somewhat neglected as a result: his early Argentine-flavored music had an edgy, sometimes harsh quality that went beyond even Bartók, while his later works (though some, like the Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 28 heard here, used 12-tone procedures) retained too much of the composer's Latin American roots for the confirmed abstractionists of what has been called the International Academic Style. Chandos' ...
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The music of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera has never fit the various agendas of 20th century composition, and has been somewhat neglected as a result: his early Argentine-flavored music had an edgy, sometimes harsh quality that went beyond even Bartók, while his later works (though some, like the Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 28 heard here, used 12-tone procedures) retained too much of the composer's Latin American roots for the confirmed abstractionists of what has been called the International Academic Style. Chandos' series of his orchestral music has uncovered some splendid, rarely recorded works, and from this set you might choose this third volume, which includes works from Ginastera's early Argentine period, his late modernist period, and his transitional style of the late 1940s and 1950s. The star here is the piano, and one of the few complaints is that Chinese pianist Xiayin Wang, something of a specialist in virtuoso repertory, does not get more prominent billing in the graphics. Sample...
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