Alberto Ginastera | “Danza Final” from the ballet Estancia, Op. 8 No. 4 

The Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera was perhaps the most influential composer of classical music from Latin America of the 20th century. His contacts and influences were great: he studied with Aaron Copland, taught Astor Piazzolla, and the rock group Emerson-Lake-and-Palmer used a movement of his Piano Concerto on their album, Brain Salad Surgery. 

“Danza Final” is the final movement of Ginastera’s four-movement orchestral suite, Estancia. The dance is cast in the form of a malambo, a dance specific to Argentina with roots dating to the 1600s. Only males are allowed to participate in this dance, and it is often used by gauchos (cowboys) to prove their manhood. The clapping of hands and a use of the feet akin to tap dancing are the hallmark of this style. The composer’s Malambo, Op. 7, for piano, composed in 1940, preceded the orchestrated version of 1941. The version for band presented this evening was arranged by David John in 1965.  

Program note altered from that prepared by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. 

Jesús Bonilla | Luna Liberiana 

This work is a Costa Rican bolero inspired by a moonlit night, illuminating the land (Liberia). The text includes the following line: “Moon to love, divine moon.” 

Program note provided by Reed Thomas. 

Lauchi Laubriel | “Represento” 

This work is a tribute to the Costa Rican Caribbean. Rhythm and movement are a part of the culture of the Afro-Caribbean region, where calypso, reggae, and merengue are highly musically rich. The work was popularized in Costa Rica and Latin America by the group Marfíl. 

Program note provided by Reed Thomas. 

 Morton Gould | Holocaust Suite 

Morton Gould was involved in performing, conducting, and writing music for more than seventy-five years. In 1983 his Centennial Symphony was premiered by the University of Texas, while another work was premiered by the New York City Ballet. He became president of ASCAP in 1986 and was still conducting and composing in the 1990s.   

Gould’s parents were immigrants from Russia and Austria. He began playing the piano when he was four, published his first composition, Just Six, when he was “just six,” and was awarded a one-year scholarship to The Institute of Musical Art (later combined with the Julliard School of Music) at the age of eight. At seventeen he dropped out of Richmond Hill High School for financial reasons and began playing in vaudeville shows, sometimes as many as five or six a day. At eighteen, Gould joined the musical staff of the Radio City Music Hall. At twenty-one he became conductor and arranger for his own weekly program over the WOR Mutual network, for which he wrote many works later performed by orchestras led by Toscanini, Rodzinski, Reiner, Mitropoulos, Ormandy, Solti, and other world-famous conductors. In 1966 a Gould-conducted recording of Ives’ First Symphony with the Chicago Symphony won a Grammy Award as the year’s best classical recording.   

Gould would go on to lead many orchestras for various networks which gained him a large audience. His music was commissioned by symphony orchestras all over the United States. His ability to seamlessly combine multiple musical genres into formal classical structure, while maintaining their distinctive elements, was unsurpassed, and Gould received three commissions for the United States Bicentennial.  

For many years Gould was an active member of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). He sat on the board from 1959 and served as president from 1986 until 1994. In 1995, Gould was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Stringmusic. All of Gould’s original manuscripts, personal papers, and other pertinent pieces, are archived in the Library of Congress and available to the public.   

Gould died on February 21, 1996, in Orlando, Florida, where he was the first resident guest composer/conductor at the Disney Institute and was in the middle of a three-day tribute honoring his music. He was eighty-two years old. 

Holocaust Suite is a six-movement suite taken from the score of the NBC-TV nine-hour miniseries Holocaust, premiered in April 1978. The band setting was commissioned by and dedicated to the Arizona State University Band, Richard E. Strange, director. With Gould conducting, it was premiered by the Arizona State University Band at the ABA Convention in Tempe, Arizona, on April 10, 1980. 

The title refers to the campaign waged by the Nazis in their attempt to annihilate all the Jews during World War II. Over six million Jews, including 1.5 million children, were put to death in what has since been described as one of the most cataclysmic events ever to befall humanity. The six movements in the Holocaust Suite are “Main Theme,” “Kristallnacht” (the night when organized bands of Nazis rampaged through the streets breaking windows of Jewish stores, synagogues, and homes as a prelude to looting and pillaging), “Berta and Joseph” (refers to Berta Weis, an accomplished pianist, playing a piece which expresses the love she had for her husband, Joseph), “Babi Yar” (a reference to the more than 100,000 victims executed in the Ukrainian Babi Yar Valley outside the city of Kiev), “Liberation” (a scene where Rudi, who has been freed, joins some young people playing soccer), and “Elegy” (an addition to the original score portraying Gould’s own perception of the Holocaust). 

Program note researched and collected by Elisabeth Jackson.