Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 07/20/2010, uploaded on 07/20/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Pampeana No. 2 for Cello and Piano, Op. 21 (1950)      Alberto Ginastera

Alberto Ginastera gave the name Pampeana-relating to the Argentine pampas-to three rhapsodic works evoking his country's low-lying plains without quoting specific folk songs or dances. Although the third is a large-scale orchestral work, the first two are more compact pieces for violin (No. 1) or cello (No. 2) and piano.

Ginastera gave his Pampeana for cello and piano the subtitle "rhapsody," and one hears in it the musical portrait of the great plains of Argentina in a series of tightly-woven vignettes.  La pampa (from the native Andean word for flatlands) contains the country's vast agricultural regions and the metropolis of Buenos Aires, a contrast that the composer exploits to great effect in the contrasting moods of the piece.

Written for cellist Aurora Natola, Ginastera's future second wife, the second Pampeana begins with a cello proclamation related to the declamations in gaucho singing competitions. The piano, initially restricted to sharp, intermittent chords, launches a vigorous folk rhythm and engages the cello in a brief dance, but soon the cello spins off into its own cadenza, full of double stops and pizzicato. The piano spends a couple of bars trying to lure the cello back to the dance floor, but the cello answers with low growls. Soon, the two instruments unite in a slow, nocturnal meditation.  Eventually the instruments fall into a final, frenzied dance with hints of the malambo, a male-only tango-like Argentine dance.     Noah Rogoff

Mr. Rogoff plays a French cello by "Nicolas à Paris," ca. 1825, and a bow made for him by David Samuels.

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.