Born in Buenos Aires in 1916, Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was well known as a composer even as a college undergraduate. Folk music was an essential source of inspiration for him. While he imports the melodies wholesale in his early works, his later pieces use folk materials to drive melodic structure and harmony. Variaciones Concertantes is an excellent example of the latter. Ginastera composed the theatrical and overtly emotional work during a challenging time in his life—his political views put him at odds with the Perón government, and he was forced out of his position as director of the music conservatory at the National University of La Plata. He supported himself by composing film scores and fulfilling commissions during this period. In 1953, the Asociación Amigos de la Música (Argentine Friends of Music) commissioned the Variaciones Concertantes, a work that had been percolating in his mind for several years. Igor Markevitch conducted the work’s premiere in June 1953.

Ginastera described the Variaciones Concertantes as “concerto-like” with “a subjective character. Instead of employing folkloric materials, an Argentine atmosphere is obtained using original melodies and rhythms...whose expressive tension has a pronounced Argentine accent." In the opening section, the solo cello statement is accompanied by a harp, whose harmony outlines the guitar’s open strings: E, A, D, G, and B. The work's twelve variations are performed without interruption. While some are brief and more ornamental in character, others, according to Ginastera, are "written in the modern form of metamorphosis, which consists in taking motives from the principal theme and constructing a new theme from them."  Two interludes—one for strings and the other for winds—frame seven variations featuring different solo instruments. Variazione giocosa features the plucky flute, while the Variazione in modo di Scherzo showcases the clarinet. A darkly dramatic elegy for viola entitled Variazione drammatica is the longest, bleeding into the Variazione canonica for oboe and bassoon, the woodwind equivalents of the viola’s husky timbre. With the Variazione ritmica for trumpet and trombone, we move into a brighter section of the musical color palette, followed by the brilliant violin pyrotechnics of the Variazione in modo di Moto perpetuo. The horn reprises the original theme in the Variazione pastorale. After repeating the opening section—this time with harp and double bass—the work concludes with the full orchestra in the brilliant Variazione in modo di Rondo—a malambo, a competitive gaucho dance to which Ginastera was drawn again and again in his compositions. Steady repeated notes represent tapping feet, while the entire orchestra heightens the excitement throughout.