Of the composers on this fine survey of Argentine piano music, the one who has appeared most frequently on concert programs internationally is
Alberto Ginastera. Many listeners, hearing the Bartókian Suite de danzas criollas, Op. 15, offered here, or one of his other bracingly modern compositions, must have wondered why it was that he attempted to (and succeeded in) incorporating Argentine national characteristics into a variety of modern styles. After all, the modernism of the twentieth century generally rejected nationalism as something distastefully tribal. Hearing the music of
Ginastera's predecessors and contemporaries sheds light on the matter: nationalism was an unusually strong force in Argentine music, and nationalism as an idea coincided with the growth of European concert music in what had been a frontier society with the cowboy as a national symbol. Pianist
Mirian Conti brings together a fascinating variety of music here, but all of it is linked together by the presence of Argentine folk and popular rhythms, including the 6/8 dance called the gato and, later, the tango. The 1938 Sonatina of Luis Gianneo is very much an Argentine counterpart of
Stravinsky's neo-Classicism, with the brisk rhythms of folk dances providing the desired dry surface. Juan José Castro's Tangos of 1941 contradict the axiom that
Astor Piazzolla was the first to merge the tango with Western classical techniques; they are humorous little tango portraits, written while
Piazzolla was still a young man working in popular tango groups.
Conti selects treatments of the gato by no fewer than four composers, showing both the variety of the individual treatments and the rootedness of each composer in what were known as criollo (creole, or native) dance rhythms. She is a sympathetic interpreter of this music, with lots of rhythmic verve yet never any tendency to let the rhythms swallow up small details of texture. This is a fine introduction to Argentine keyboard music for anyone curious about the roots of that Latin American nation's major presence on the world musical stage.