Pampeana No. 1, Op. 16 (Ginastera)
Movements
Notes
Written shortly after the composer’s sojourn in the United States, Alberto Ginastera’s Pampeana No.1 (1947) for violin and piano returns to the folkloric elements that played such a prominent role in Ginastera’s earlier works.
The provincial influence here is primarily a rhythmic one, characterized by syncopations adorned with unexpectedly brash dissonances and abrasive textures. The work opens with a free introductory passage, the piano providing an airy, arrhythmic accompaniment to the ethereal floating of the violin in its upper register. As the violin descends and ascends through the extremes of its range, melody and harmony become more insistent. A rhapsodic solo for the violin gives way to a lively section in which pizzicati and guitaristic effects in the violin are mimicked by the piano. Ginastera saturates the texture with a freneticism that slips freely between chromaticism, polytonality, and purely percussive tone clusters. A series of dramatic glissandi and frantic ostinati expends the work’s final burst of energy.
