DSO Berlin, Arturo Tamayo - Alberto Ginastera: Concerto per corde; Estudios sinfonicos; Glosses; Iubilum (2016)

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DSO Berlin, Arturo Tamayo - Alberto Ginastera: Concerto per corde; Estudios sinfonicos; Glosses; Iubilum (2016)

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The Concerto for Strings (1965) and Glosses on Themes by Pablo Casals (heard here in its original string orchestra version of 1976) – masterpieces from Alberto Ginastera’s late, modernist period – are both well represented on disc. New to the catalogue are the Estudios sinfonicos (‘Symphonic Etudes’), arguably his most experimental work.

Composed for the Vancouver Symphony to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Canadian independence, the studies employ an arsenal of (then) avant-garde techniques, including microtonal writing and improvisatory passages. Truth be told, it’s only intermittently successful. At times it seems as if Ginastera had tried to cram as many novel sounds into the score as possible. Apparently, he himself was dissatisfied with the result and made several major revisions, including ditching an entire movement. It’s certainly worthwhile to have on record, however. The second movement, entitled ‘Para los movimientos alígeros’ (‘For Winged Movements’) is wonderfully evocative of whispery, fluttering motion, and Ginastera’s innate dramatic sense is manifest in something as subtle as a short harp glissando (at 2'01").

Iubilum (1980), another celebratory commission – this for the 400th anniversary of the founding of Buenos Aires – was previously recorded by the Louisville Orchestra. It, too, is an odd score: the jubilation suggested by the title is only evident in small sections that seem like addenda. Instead, the overall mood is gravely ceremonial, with a hint of tragic grandeur in the opening fanfare. The Louisville recording was good but this is both better played and better recorded. The Concerto and Glosses are also extremely well done. Arturo Tamayo elicits committed, colourful playing from the DSO Berlin and the engineering is first rate.

Review by Andrew Farach-Colton, Gramophone

Though there has been a clutch of anniversary releases, this year’s centenary of Alberto Ginastera’s birth has yet to produce really significant new recordings of his most important works. The Warner Classics disc put together by conductor Gisele Ben-Dor was perhaps the most significant so far, for it included the Argentinian composer’s beautiful Kafka cantata, Milena, and extracts from his first opera, Don Rodrigo, but others have tended to focus on the earlier, better known and more overtly nationalistic pieces.

All four of the works on this Capriccio disc, though, belong to the last phase of Ginastera’s composing life, which began in the late 1950s and continued until his death in 1983. His music became “neo-expressionist” (his own description), and freely incorporated elements from the postwar European avant garde, including serialism and the use of microtones and chance procedures.

The six movements that make up the Estudios Sinfonicos, from 1967, almost seem like a catalogue of these devices – one movement is called Para los Microtonos y las Sonoridades Insólitas (For Microtones and Strange Sonorities); another is Para las Densidades (For the Densities) – but elsewhere the fashionable techniques are often still combined with much more traditionally expressive writing. In the Concerto for Strings of 1965, motoric Bartókian passages and neoclassical rhythmic unisons alternate with florid solo cadenzas and occasional dense clusters, while in the Glosses Sobre Temes de Pau Casals, completed in 1977, melodies composed by or associated with the great cellist are put through the modernist mince. The purest diatonic tunes are juxtaposed with reflections of themselves in tangles of micropolyphony, or threaded through drifting, rootless chords.

At the end of this life Ginastera seemed to be retreating from his expressionist extremes towards a style much closer to that of his earlier music. Jubilum, composed in 1980 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Buenos Aires, maintains the high levels of dissonance but combines them with music that is much more obviously celebratory. Like all the pieces here, it uses a huge orchestra with virtuoso brilliance; Arturo Tamayo’s performance with the Berlin Deutsches Symphonie captures every bit of that brilliance, and they make sure they extract all the dramatic power out of the other pieces in this very useful collection too.

Review by Andrew Clements, The Guardian

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DSO Berlin, Arturo Tamayo - Alberto Ginastera: Concerto per corde; Estudios sinfonicos; Glosses; Iubilum (2016)

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DSO Berlin, Arturo Tamayo - Alberto Ginastera: Concerto per corde; Estudios sinfonicos; Glosses; Iubilum (2016)

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DSO Berlin, Arturo Tamayo - Alberto Ginastera: Concerto per corde; Estudios sinfonicos; Glosses; Iubilum (2016)

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