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Ralph Votapek Music by Ginastera, Poulenc, Szymanowski & Piazzolla Ralph Votapek Music by Ginastera, Poulenc, Szymanowski and Piazzolla Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was born in Buenos Aires, April 11, 1916. From early childhood he showed interest in music, beginning formal studies when he was seven years old. At twelve he entered the Conservatorio Williams, eventually entering the National Conservatory of Music where his teachers included Athos Palma and Jose Andre. His first mature work, the score for the ballet Panambi, was also the first he allowed to survive. The suite from the ballet was premiered in 1937 and the complete ballet was intro- duced at the Teatro Colon in 1940. Primitive in its rhythms and modern harmonies, the score constantly reveals the composer’s interest in a national Argentine idiom. During this time he also wrote the wonderful piano work, Danzas Argentinas. In 1938 he graduated with honors from the National Conservatory. In 1941 he was commissioned the ballet Estancia, and his first symphony, Sinfonia Portena followed in 1942. In 1942 he received a Alberto Ginastera Guggenheim Fellowship and he visited the United States. World War II inspired his Twelve American Preludes for piano and the Elegiac Symphony (1944), dedicated to those who “died for freedom.” From 1945-1947 he lived in New York. In 1948 he became director of the conservatory of the province of Buenos Aires in La Plata. In 1948 he completed another important work — his first string quartet. Ginastera’s Piano Sonata No.1 (1952) and the Variaciones Concertantes (1953) followed. Because of his pronounced anti-Fascist sentiments, Ginastera became increasingly suspect in Argentina dur- ing the Peron regime. Finally, in 1952, he was dismissed as director of the Conservatory of Music and Drama which he had founded. Compelled to earn his living elsewhere, he took to writing motion picture scores. In 1955, with the overthrow of the Peron regime, Ginastera was restored to his Conservatory post — where he remained until 1958 when he resigned to become director of the new Facultad de Ciencias y Artes Musicales of the Catholic University. His Piano Concerto was premiered in Washington, D.C. in 1959 and for the opening season of the New York Philharmonic at – 2 – the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Ginastera was commissioned to write a violin concerto. Ruggiero Ricci introduced it with Leonard Bernstein conducting on October 2, 1963. Ginastera’s opera Don Rodrigo was performed by the New York City Opera in 1966. His next opera Bomarzo (1967) was an extraordinary success. Its overt sexuality prompted one critic to label it “Porno in Belcanto.” In 1971 he wrote his third opera, Beatrix Cenci and in 1972 his Second Piano Concerto was introduced by pianist Hilde Somer with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. His second and third piano sonatas were written in 1981-1982, his cello sonata in 1979 and his cello concertos in 1968 and 1980. Additionally, Ginastera wrote two other string quartets, No.2 in 1958 and No.3 in 1973. Alberto Ginastera died in Geneva, Switzerland on June 25, 1983. Sonata No.1, Opus 22 was composed in 1952 for the Pittsburg Contemporary Music Festival on a commission from the Carnegie Institute and the Pennsylvania College for Women. Johana Harris, pianist-wife of the American composer, Roy Harris, gave the premiere on November 29, 1952. The composer provided the following notes: “The Piano Sonata is divided into four movements. The first one, Allegro marcato, corresponds to the plan of the sonata-form with two main themes: the first one is built upon complex rhythmic cells while the second has a melodic character. The second movement has the structure of a scherzo in three parts whose main theme arises from a row. The whole move- ment is played pianissimo and has strange sonorities. The third movement, Adagio molto appassion- ato, corresponds to the form of a three-part Lied (song). The theme in the first and third parts appears as a lyric improvisation, the second being of a passionate character. The fourth movement, Ruvido ed ostinato (“Rough and Obstinate”), is built in the form of a rondo in five parts with the style and tech- nique of a toccata. This movement is built on a rhythmic line which changes constantly within a fixed structure.” Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) Francis Poulenc was a true “musicien francais,” which is to say, of course, that Poulenc’s music is bound to be a bit inexplicable to those of us who listen with non-French ears. We won’t have any trouble enjoying it. Poulenc is as persuasive as Piaf, as mellifluous as Melarchino and mostly about as modern as Mendelssohn. No twelve-tone implications here! No language of dissonance (not a consistent and logical dissonant language, anyhow). Poulenc was once a radical shocker. But, even in 1960, his dissonance remained that of the snazzy musical revolution of the 1920’s, now verging upon the quaint for our case-hardened ears. And the Poulencian consonance is that of the later 1930’s, when “modern” music permitted itself to relax, for awhile, and plain, old-fashioned C major chords were once again heard — somewhat to everyone’s relief. That time, too, is – 3 – now gone. But in the 1960’s Poulenc was still there. Born in 1899 in Paris, Poulenc wrote his first piano composi- tions in early 1917. In 1919 the concert audiences heard his three Mouvements Perpetuels and Poulenc became a household name almost overnight. He then joined a group of French composers (along with Milhaud, Durey, Auric, Honegger and Tailleferre) called “The French Six.” In 1924 Sergei Diaghilev commissioned Poulenc to write a score for the Ballet Russe, and the result was Les Biches (“The Does”). The ballet was a great success. One critic wrote: “The Poulenc score is exquisite... With its ironic and slightly rakish twists, its thoroughly traditional elegance of thought, it goes straight to the point, its one aim being to bring delight.” Many works followed — the Concert Champetre, a Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, the Mass in G Major, songs, chamber music and, of course, more piano pieces. During World War II, Poulenc was an active member of the French Resistance movement. Francis Poulenc Works from these years include the poignant Violin Sonata dedi- cated to the memory of Federico Garcia Lorca and the deeply mov- ing, tragic choral work, Figure Humaine. In 1957 he produced the opera Les Dialogues des Carmelites, which received its American premiere at the San Francisco Opera on September 22, 1957. In 1959 he produced La Voix Humaine, and in 1961 the six-part Gloria for chorus and orchestra. Francis Poulenc died suddenly at his home in Paris on January 30, 1963. Critic Jay Harrison once stated that, “In many ways, Poulenc is Paris. He is gay like Paris, sad like Paris. And he bustles constantly. His hands wave, his eyebrows arch, he twitches, grins, makes faces. When his mouth talks, all of him talks too. If he is not Paris, he is at least French. Not even a deaf man could doubt that.” And certainly that is also true of Poulenc’s music. Poulenc’s eight nocturnes span about a decade (1929-1938). Although they are often played separately, Poulenc created a “cycle” when he composed the eighth nocturne and titled it “Pour servir de Coda au Cycle” (“To serve as the Coda for the Cycle”). Unlike Chopin’s or Faure’s, Poulenc’s nocturnes are not romantic tone- poems. They are instead “night-scenes” and “sound-images” of public and private events. The first Nocturne, in C major, acts as a prelude to the set. It is typically Poulenc — constructed out of a touching, almost child-like melodic pattern, with some Stravinskian style touches and a weird epilogue marked, “le double plus lent.” The second Nocturne is entitled “Bal de jeunes filles.” – 4 – The young girls, in Poulenc’s world, are indulging in a quadrille, a dance with both military and the- atrical associations. According to biographer Wilfrid Howard Mellers, this Nocturne “is a delicious Poulenc image for the vulnerability of youth, perhaps even the vanity of human wishes.” The third Nocturne, is entitled “Les Cloches de Malines.” Mellers sees this as a different kind of genre-piece “for it aurally depicts a small-town market-square that is probably, at dead of night, destitute of people. Bells toll through fourths between F and C, played by the left hand in equal crotchets but irregular metre, as though the mechanism is defective. It may well be, since the bells are very old, being in one of Poulenc’s ‘antique’ pieces — with the proviso that its world, however ancient, is still extant... the cacophony that eventually forms a brief middle section has a programmatic intention... perhaps the frantic clangings warn of some disaster, or maybe the clock’s works have gone crazy. In any case, we hear the raucous chaos in psychological as well as physical terms: the hubbub is the ills that flesh is heir to, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, things that go bump in the night.” The fourth Nocturne, “Bal fantôme” carries a quotation by Julien Green: “Pas une note des valses ou des scottisches ne se perdait dans toute la maison, si bien que le malade eut sa part de la fête et put rêver sur son grabat aux bonnes années de sa jeunesse.” We are led by Poulenc through an old-world, “phantom ball” where the chromatic harmony, sen- suously spaced, moves us through a by-gone-era waltz. It is dream-like, seductive and welcoming.

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