Various Composers - Escenas Argentinas (Gabriel Castagna)

Information

1. Carlos López Buchardo - Escenas Argentinas: 1. Día de fiesta
2. Carlos López Buchardo - Escenas Argentinas: 2. El arroyo
3. Carlos López Buchardo - Escenas Argentinas: 3. La campera
4. Julián Aguirre - Due danze Argentine (orch. Ernest Ansermet): 1. La huella
5. Julián Aguirre - Due danze Argentine (orch. Ernest Ansermet): 2. El gato
6. Astor Piazzolla - Tangazo: Variations on Buenos Aires
7. Luis Gianneo - El tarco en flor
8. Carlos Guastavino - Las niñas (No. 1 from Tres romances argentinos)
9. Oscar Giúdice - Salmo al Paraná

Orquesta Sinfónica de Entre Ríos

Gabriel Castagna, conductor

Date: 2004

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010185

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Review

The twin pillars of 20th-century Argentinian music are Ginastera and Piazzolla, the first the embodiment of Classical rigour, the other’s work the epitome of the street dance. Chandos’s collection covers ground between these two poles, though it does feature Piazzolla’s most impressive orchestral piece, the variation-fantasia Tangazo. Castagna directs a crisply drawn account, full of swing and impulsion but perhaps not as richly textured as Dutoit’s or Castagna’s previous recording. Of equal musical weight is Luis Gianneo’s symphonic poem El tarco en flor (‘The tarco in bloom’, 1930), an impressive nature painting inspired by the flora of the composer’s native Tucuman, in the north-west of the country.

Escenas argentines by Carlos López Buchardo (1881-1948), is almost light music, a brightly orchestrated triptych dating from 1919-20 whose programme centres on a fiesta and a nearby brook. There are echoes of Sibelius at the opening and Respighi in the central span, although it is the restrained finale that impresses most. There’s another uncanny touch of Sibelius – the opening of the Second Symphony, no less – at the onset of the first of Julián Aguirre’s Two Argentine Dances. Its even, repeated-note pattern dominates the piece but the succeeding ‘El gato’ (‘The cat’) is more individual although clearly influenced – like much here – by French music.

Both amount to rather more than Guastavino’s anonymous waltz-fantasy ‘Las Niñas’, part of a triptych written in 1948-49. Heavily influenced by Ravel, it sounds more like a film music approximation (think Richard Rodney Bennett’s Murder on the Orient Express but not nearly as distinctive). By contrast, the Respighian symphonic prelude Salmo al Paraná by Oscar Giúdice (1906-74) is a little gem. Delightful performances, splendidly recorded.

-- Guy Rickards, Gramophone

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The Argentine conductor Gabriel Castagna began his musical studies in Buenos Aires and continued in the USA, where he studied at the Universities of Rochester, Cincinnati, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh and Michigan. Among his teachers were Gustav Meier, Robert Page and Samuel Jones. He has participated in master-classes with Leonard Bernstein, Sergiu Celibidache and Max Rudolf and is the recipient of many awards and other distinctions. Devoted to promoting the symphonic works of Argentine composers, Gabriel Castagna has performed and recorded the music of Alberto Ginastera, Astor Piazzolla, among others.

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