Ginastera: Cello Concertos

"Zagrosek and the Bambergers, proven experts in the past century’s most demanding scores, give these concertos their all, with color, imagination, and precision." --Fanfare, September 2011

“The Argentinian Alberto Ginastera proves to be the winning ticket for cellist Mark Kosower… These electric and lyrical performances revel in the music's percussive rhythms as well as its reflective and mysterious melodic invention.” --The Strad

Alberto Ginastera was one of the most admired and respected musical voices of the twentieth century, who successfully fused the strong traditional influences of his national heritage with experimental, contemporary, and classical techniques. The two Cello Concertos are among his most innovative, brilliant and technically formidable compositions.

The First Concerto, the definitive version of which was premièred by Ginastera’s second wife Aurora Nátola in 1978, is notable for the provocative singing lines, Latin dance rhythms and virtuosity of its solo part, and the intense colours and abundant percussion of the orchestral accompaniment.

The Second Concerto, composed as a 10th wedding anniversary tribute ‘To my dear Aurora’, makes more prominent use of Argentine folk elements. It includes a brilliant depiction of the rising sun, percussion instruments portraying sounds of the jungle, and a celebratory rustic finale.

Tchaikovsky, Saint-Säens & Ginastera: Cello Works

Cellist Sol Gabetta possesses a beautifully singing tone, an evenly warm sound across the range of her instrument, precise intonation, and a large array of colors and techniques at her disposal. Yet her debut album fails to make a tremendous impact on its listeners. While sheer technique and virtuosity shouldn't win out over considerations of musical artistry, works like the Rococo Variations still require at least a little bit of sparkle and dazzle to maintain the excitement. Despite her amply beautiful sound, Gabetta's interpretation comes across as cautious and lackluster. 

The seven variations lack adequate distinction in tempo and character, with the third, fourth, and sixth variations being interminably slow. The Saint-Saëns concerto is slightly more vigorous in the first theme, but by the second theme the tempo once again comes almost to a standstill. Ginastera's Pampeana No. 2, heard here in a version for cello and string orchestra, is the most interesting and vivacious piece on the disc, but is still not as fiery as it should be. 

The orchestra accompaniment is similarly sluggish and the playing in the string section is often imprecise. While listeners will most likely enjoy Gabetta's rich sound, they may wish to look elsewhere for a more lively and varied performance of all the works heard here. --allmusic.com

Ginastera: Glosses sobre temas de Pau Casals & Variaciones concertantes

“if you want to explore the full range of the composer's melodic invention and vivid orchestral palette, you could hardly better this superbly played and recorded coupling...First rate recording too.” --Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“It's an extrovert, rather gushing work...The performances are suitably rumbustious” --The Guardian, February 2010 ***

Alberto Ginastera’s dazzling Glosses on Themes of Pablo Casals, heard here in both its original version for string quartet and string orchestra and its later fully-orchestrated version, pays tribute to his close friend, the legendary cellist (and composer) on the occasion of the centenary of Casals’s birth.

The Variaciones concertantes places a variety of instruments in the limelight with featured solos, culminating in a virtuosic malambo, the archetypical gaucho ‘jousting’ dance whose vertiginous motion engenders frenetic enthusiasm among both participants and onlookers.

Gliere & Ginastera: Harp Concertos, Etc

"a marvellously enjoyable disc." --Gramophone Magazine

If you are decadent enough to have your CD sound piped through to the bathroom, this is the kind of disc you would surely enjoy there. As JBS noted in reviewing the reissued performances on mid-price Decca, Glière's concertos are unashamed Easy Listening. Composed in 1938, though most of it could have been written 50 or more years earlier, the Harp Concerto is anodyne and ingratiating throughout – and absolutely irresistible if you are in the mood. Rachel Masters is every bit as fluent an exponent as Osian Ellis, and the generous acoustic of All Saints Church, Tooting allows every note to hang deliciously in the air.

The Concerto for coloratura soprano is another mellifluous and undemanding piece. Undemanding for the listener, that is; for the soprano it is a merciless examination of breath control and intonation, with no consonants to articulate, no vowels to colour the sound, and no text to guide the interpretation. Eileen Hulse sails through with scarcely a hint of distress; she even adds some phrases not in the printed Kalmus score, taking her up to an exquisite E in all (from 2'33", bars 140 to 155 in the second movement). It's a pity her final top F fractionally overshoots, but in general I prefer her sensitively blended chamber-music approach to the blowsier operatic delivery of Dame Joan Sutherland (who opts for the lower octave at the end). Neither singer can avoid parts of the faster second movement sounding like a castrato version of The Laughing Policeman.

Gliere's lush late romanticism and Chandos's house-style recording are a marriage made in heaven. But Ginastera's 1956 Concerto is another matter. A colourful display piece, thoroughly Latin American in feel and with a particularly attractive Bartókian Night-Music central movement, its style is generally about half-way between that composer and Bernstein. Much of the scoring is quite heavy when the harp is not playing, and in this instance some of the colours tend to run in the acoustic wash. Having said that, this is another crisp and rhythmically alert performance from soloist and orchestra alike, completing a marvellously enjoyable disc.

Ginastera: Violin Concerto · Bartók: Sonata for Violin and Piano

The Concerto for violin and orchestra by Alberto Ginastera is one of the most complex and original works written for this formation in our century. Its form, beginning with a Cadenza for solo violin followed by six studies, is already completely different from that of the traditional concerto. The central part is made up of an Adagio for 22 soloists which shapes the method of the concerto for orchestra in which individual instruments emerge from the orchestral context. 

The orchestral forces are truly impressive. This 1968 live recording features Salvatore Accardo at the peak of his career and, on the podium, a Mario di Bonaventura who contributes to a performance of very high quality and great fascination. The CD programme is completed by Bartók’s interesting Sonata for violin and piano, the composer’s first work for this formation.

MP3 320 · 122 MB

Ginastera : Popul Vuh (The Mayan Creation)

Here’s a terrific Ginastera collection. The Estancia and Panambi suites are drawn from Ben-Dor’s complete recording, also now on Naxos, and they are somewhat different from the composer’s own. So if you don’t have the complete versions but do have other recordings of these two suites, you really aren’t duplicating by getting this disc as well. The remaining works are all equally well-played, with the Suite de Danzas Criollas being very idiomatically orchestrated by Shimon Cohen.

This performance of Popul Vuh may not be quite as savage as Slatkin’s premiere recording on RCA, but that was far less interestingly coupled, and it’s difficult to take issue with any particular aspect of the performance generally. In this context the music seems all of a piece, and as a single-disc survey of Ginastera’s orchestral music it would be difficult to imagine a more attractive program than this one. Given the different orchestras, venues, and recording dates, the engineering is remarkably consistent. -- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

MP3 320 · 157 MB

Asturiana

“It looks like a standard song recital, yet it's played on the viola. …the opening excerpt from Falla's Seven Popular Songs… turns up later in its usual context to hypnotic effect: slower than would be singable, and so contemplative that it sounds like Arvo Pärt. The sense of concentration, with minute inflections of line and timbre in which the pianist is caught up too, continues into the ensuing Granados set.” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2007 *****

“The performances deceive the ear into thinking these idiomatic arrangements are instrumental originals.” --Gramophone Magazine, November 2007

A remarkable, absorbing, beautiful recording

Wow! That is really almost all I can think of to say. This is a remarkable, absorbing, beautiful recording, one I have returned to many times in the month since Fanfare headquarters sent it my way. Kim Kashkashian is one of the finest violists of our time, and she and Robert Levin have been performing together for many years. One of the results of that is an extraordinary chemistry between them—and in this case we are the beneficiaries.

These are not pure transcriptions of Spanish and Argentine songs—they are transcriptions-plus. The “plus” factors are subtle additions, modifications, ornamentations, enhancements—none of which disguise or distort the original melodies, and all of which add interest. Kashkashian’s beautiful, dark, richly varied tone inflects these as completely as any singer could, and Levin plays with beauty of line and remarkable rhythmic vitality. The piano opening of “Polo,” the last of the Seven Popular Spanish Songs of Manuel de Falla, is so brilliantly articulated and rhythmically alive as to snap the listener to attention.

Three of the songs appear twice on the disc, including the title piece, “Asturiana.” It is one of the Falla songs, and it opens the disc alone and re-appears (in what seems a different performance) later on in its proper place in the Falla cycle. The other two are Ginastera’s dark “Triste,” and “La rosa y el sauce” by Carlos Guastavino. The repeats fit into the shape of the program perfectly.

It is that shape, along with the gripping performances, that makes this disc unique. The recorded sound is up to ECM’s usual very high standards, resulting in the feeling of having the musicians in the room with you. ECM even provides English texts for the songs, despite the fact that the words are not sung. A truly memorable disc. --FANFARE: Henry Fogel

MP3 320 · 162 MB

Ginastera: Estancia, Variaciones concertantes, Concierto para Harpa

This light and lively production best serves the coolly elegant Variaciones concertantes and the Harp Concerto, whose magical sonorities are particularly complemented by the transparent recording and chamber deployment of the Orquesta Cuidad de Granada. Both works also enjoy outstanding solo work from harpist Magdalena Barrera and the ensemble's various first-desk players. In fact, there is no better performance available of the Harp Concerto, a piece that successfully inhabits a world between Ginastera's early folk-inspired music and his later expressionist style.

As to the Overture to Creole Faust and the Estancia Dances, many listeners doubtless will enjoy conductor Josep Pons' lively tempos and snappy rhythms. Indeed, the final Malambo from Estancia seldom has sounded so secure in its play with compound meter. Still, there's no denying the fact that the music isn't as pulse-pounding as it can be. For example, the recent Bridge recording of these two works from Odense remains unequalled for barbaric splendor and coloristic detail, albeit at a slightly slower pace.

Nevertheless, there's too much beautiful playing for this disc not to be perfectly enjoyable on its own terms, and if Pons chooses to emphasize the music's polish and grace, that's just as much a part of Ginastera's Latin heritage as his more savage side. In short, these performances may not be to everyone's taste, but they have character as well as a real point of view. They stand out from the crowd in a positive way, and in the long run that's what matters most. Fans of the composer will welcome this opportunity to broaden their idea of how his music can sound. [12/13/2003] --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

MP3 320 · 157 MB