Carlos
Guastavino (b. 1912)
Romance
dei Plata (Sonatina para piano a cuatro manos)
(Sonatina
for piano duet)
Tres
Romances (para dos pianos)
(Three
Romances, for two pianos)
La
Siesta (Tres Preludios)
(The
Siesta, Three Preludes)
Las
Presencias (Appearances)
The
Argentinian composer Garlos Guastavino was born in Santa Fé in 1912. He first
studied chemical engineering, but won a provincial government scholarship that
enabled him to study music in Buenos Aires, where he entered the National Gonservatory in
1938 as a student of the composer Athos Palma, professor of harmony. He studied
further in Europe in the years after the
war. His compositions include songs, song-cycles and piano pieces. Notable
among his orchestral works are the ballet Once Upon A Time, written in 1942,
and the Suite Argentina, while his chamber music includes a violin sonata,
written in 1952. In style he relies heavily on Argentinian traditional dance
rhythms and melodies, writing in an idiom that clearly proclaims its national
origins. His best known songs include La rosa y el sauce (The Rose and the Willow) and Se equivoco la paloma
(The Dove).
Romance
del Plata is a three-movement sonatina for piano duet. Its gently lyrical first
movement, its texture never overloaded by superfluous notes, ends with a rapid
coda, leading to a slow movement, marked Andante cantabile sereno, moving from
the first movement key of A major to D major, with thematic material treated
antiphonally between the two players. The Sonatina ends with a Rondo that
includes episodes of more overtly Latin American character.
Tres
Romances, Three Romances, for two pianos, published in 1951, opens with Las Niñas
(The Girls), in the key of E flat minor, a moving piece that again treats the
two instruments with great delicacy. The second Prelude, Muchacho Jujeño (Jujeño
Boy), dedicated to the composer's sisters, offers a contrast in mood and
spirit, with its insistently repeated folk rhythms. It is followed by a final Baile
(Dance), in F sharp major, the enharmonic tonic major of the first Prelude,
providing a still more marked contrast to w hat has gone before.
Bailecito,
in C sharp minor, is a two piano version of a characteristic dance of Bolivian
origin and is followed here by Gato, a rural Argentinian dance. Llanura opens
calmly, before moving to a central scherzando section. It is followed by a free
version for two pianos of the composer's song Se equivoco la paloma (The Dove),
a setting of a poem by Rafael Alberti, a Spanish poet who took refuge in Buenos Aires after the Spanish Civil
War. The rhythm of the words suggests the rhythmic and melodic contour of the
principal melody.
La
Siesta, published in 1955, for one piano, contains three characteristic pieces,
El Patio (The Courtyard), El Sauce (The Willow) and Gorriones (Sparrows). The
first two breathe an air of sultry calm, largely dispelled in the end by the
livelier third piece. The portraits of Las Presencias, again for one piano,
are, the composer assures us, entirely imaginary, so that neither Loduvina nor Horacio
Lavalle are to be identified with any known person, living or dead. The
characters portrayed, however, are clearly evident from the music itself, the
first, published in 1959, delicate and elegant, the second, written in 1961, a
more brusquely capricious man, with passionate changes of mood.
Hector
Moreno - Norberto Capelli
In
March 1974 Hector Moreno and Norberto Capelli gave their first piano duo
recital in Buenos Aires, embarking on an international career as soloists with
orchestra, in recitals, on record and in recordings for broadcasts. As a duo
the two pianists studied at the Royal College of Music in London, in Paris with
Jacqueline Robin and in Florence with Maria Tipo and Alessandro Specchi. They
have appeared widely in concert performance, as teachers and in broadcasts by
the major European broadcasting organizations. Their recordings include the
complete works of Robert Schumann for piano duet and for two pianos.