Hyperion Records

St Vitus’s dance is apparently no less an affliction for South Americans, to judge by the first and last songs of Alberto Ginastera’s Cinco Canciones Populares Argentinas. Both Chacarera and Gato involve the pianist in mind-bending combinations of triple and duple rhythms, thankfully slowed to a gentle lilt in the wistful cadences of the central song, Zamba. Ginastera (1916–1983) was a leading figure in Argentinean music, both as composer and teacher, a founder-member of the Composers’ League of Argentina and honoured by academic foundations not only in Buenos Aires, but also in Chile, Brazil and the USA. A confirmed nationalist in his early works, he later adopted a more radical style that he called Neo-Expressionism, partly as a result of studies in the United States. Even early folk-based works like these songs (composed in 1943 at the age of 27) are spiced with modernistic tonal clashes and Bartókian cross-rhythms, and have a generally leaner texture than those of his more traditional contemporaries. This not only lends bite to the more extrovert numbers but also tempers the sweetness of the lullaby, Arrorró, and gives a sense of space to the distant calls in the piano introduction to Triste.

from notes by Roger Vignoles © 2002