We share Mr. Iron's impression that there is not a great deal that sounds serial about Ginastera's First Sonata. It should be added though that the admirable Mr. Lebrecht was not the only authority we consulted. In the latest fifth edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music we read "His music was in a nationalistic idiom up to about 1958 when he adopted more advanced procedures including serialism (first apparent in the 1952 pianoforte sonata), microtones, and aleatory rhythms." So there must be something somewhere in the work which impressed those critics. Perhaps we should sit down and listen to the whole sonata with care and come back to-morrow with our finds if any.
I should tend to go along with a much more penetrative and credible authority than Lebrecht - Paul Griffiths. Writing of Ginastera in
The New Oxford Companion to Music he says:
His earlier works, including the Indian ballet Panambi (1934-6) and the Piano Sonata (1952), use elements of folk music, but later these were fused into a vigorous and colourful style drawing eclectically on Bartók and other modern masters. The main works of the second period are the Cantata para América mágica for voice and percussion orchestra (1960), the First Piano Concerto (1961), and three operas exploiting perverse and violent emotions: Don Rodrigo (1964), Bomorzo (1967), and Beatrix Centi (1971).
I feel there is certainly a hint of Bartók in the snatch presented, but I don't really associate the phrase "Bartók and other modern masters" with older (and perhaps by then already
passé) composers such as Schoenberg and Webern.
Baz
