Alberto Ginastera

Born: April 11, 1916, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died: June 25, 1983, Geneva, Switzerland

“Malambo” from Four Dances from Estancia, Op. 8a

• Composed: 1941
  
• Premiere: May 12, 1943 in Buenos Aires, conducted by Ferruccio Calusio
• CSO Notable Performances:
  • First CSO Performance: October 1963 at a Young People’s Concert, Ronald Ondrejka conducting
  • First & Most Recent CSO Subscription: October 2009, Kristjan Järvi conducting
  • Most Recent: November 2019 at a Young People’s Concert, François López-Ferrer conducting
• Instrumentation: flute, 2 piccolos, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, bass drum, castanets, crash cymbals, military drum, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, tambour de Basque, tambourine, tenor drum, triangle, xylophone, piano, strings
• Duration: approx. 3 minutes

Alberto Ginastera, Argentina’s most famous and widely performed composer, was the outstanding creative figure in South American music following the death of Heitor Villa-Lobos in 1959. Ginastera’s career was divided between composition and education, and in the latter capacity he held posts at leading conservatories and universities in Argentina and at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. His musical works, many written on American commissions, include three operas, two ballets, six concertos, 11 film scores, eight orchestral works, various vocal and choral compositions, and much music for chamber ensembles and piano. Ginastera traveled extensively to oversee the presentation of his compositions and to adjudicate major musical competitions, and for his contributions to music he was honored with many awards, including memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Ginastera divided his works into two stylistic categories. The first (“Nationalism”) includes his music before the mid-1950s, which was strongly influenced by Argentine musical idioms and themes. He modeled those works on the folksongs and dances known as música criolla without using literal quotations, imbuing them with the spirit and styles of the country’s indigenous peoples, pampas (the vast Argentinean grasslands) and traditions of the gauchesco (the Argentinean cowboy). Ginastera’s second style (“Neo-Expressionism”) began around 1958 and encompassed most of his later compositions, works characterized by such modernist techniques as polytonality, serial writing, quarter-tones and other micro intervals, and an extension of instrumental resources. Ginastera’s compositions, combining Argentinean musical traditions with the techniques of classical and modern European music, place him among the great composers of the 20th century.

Lincoln Kirstein, director of the American Ballet Caravan, became familiar with Ginastera’s first ballet, Panambi, during the company’s tour of South America in 1941. Recognizing the young composer’s genius, Kirstein commissioned from Ginastera Estancia, a stage work for the Ballet Caravan with a scenario based on Argentine country life. The preface to the score notes, “The ballet presents various daily aspects of the activities of an estancia (Argentine ranch), from dawn to dusk, with a symbolic sense of continuity. The plot of the ballet shows a country girl who at first despises the man of the city. She finally admires him when he proves that he can perform the most rough and difficult tasks of the country.” Although the Ballet Caravan was disbanded the following year, before it could perform the new work, a suite of dances from the score was given on May 12, 1943 at Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colón that confirmed Ginastera’s position as a leading figure in Argentine musical life. (The full ballet was not staged until 1952, also at the Colón.) In extracting the suite from Estancia, Ginastera omitted the songs for baritone based on texts from the great epic poem of the gauchesco literature Martin Fierro and several pastoral scenes. The ballet’s Danza final: Malambo is brilliant and driving, largely built on short, recurring rhythmic and melodic patterns that accumulate enormous energy.

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda