South America… Chôros, Tangos and a little bit of Opera.

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you.

And because there’s a lot of music out there each episode has something of a theme. And for this episode it is… South America. Before I put this episode together I knew about half the pieces I am going to play. The rest are as new for me as I suspect they might be for you. Which is I hope more of a positive than a negative. And whilst this episode is for everyone out there listening… it is actually inspired by a couple of friends who are about to head to South America and another couple who have sadly just had to postpone a trip there.

Alright. In the next hour and a bit I am going to play you music from Astor Piazzola, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Osvaldo Golijov, Alberto Ginastera and Camargo Guarnieri. To try and cover a decent range of their music, of which there is a huge amount, I have generally used just small sections from larger works. On this episode’s page at the show’s website, classicalforeveryone.net, I'll put a link to a Spotify playlist where you can hear the complete pieces. One more bit of preamble… whilst I can get away with passable Spanish pronunciation, Portuguese is uncharted territory so I'll apologise in advance for the mangling that is more than likely going to take place.

In the last few decades the South American composer whose works have probably done more to bring the music of the continent to a broader audience is the Argentinian Astor Piazzolla who lived from 1921 to 1992. He is best known for taking the distinctive and  popular dance form, the tango, which was born in the working class port neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and applying it to more traditional ‘classical’  and ‘jazz’ forms and instrumentations. And this became known as 'nuevo tango’ or ‘new tango’.

Here is Piazzolla’s ‘Concerto for Quintet’ written in 1971 performed here playing the Bandoneon (a relative of the accordion) – Per Arne Glorvigen the Clarinet – Michel Portal the Double Bass – Alois Posch the Piano – Vadim Sakharov and leading from the Violin – Gidon Kremer. It is about 9 minutes long.

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That was Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Concerto for Quintet’ performed by Bandoneon – Per Arne Glorvigen Clarinet – Michel Portal Double Bass – Alois PoschPiano – Vadim Sakharov and leading from the Violin – Gidon Kremer.

Ok. Staying in Argentina next I have the 2^nd part of a work the composer Osvaldo Golijov called ‘Last Round for double string quartets and double bass’ From 1996. The performers are the St Lawrence String Quartet; the Ying String Quartet and the solo Double Bass player is Mark Dresser. Golijov wrote this as a tribute to Piazzolla and you might be able to hear a very slowed down tango rhythm in parts of the piece.

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That was  the 2^nd part of a work the composer Osvaldo Golijov called ‘Last Round for double string quartets and double bass’. The performers were the St Lawrence String Quartet; the Ying String Quartet and the solo Double Bass player was Mark Dresser.

Ok. I hope you are enjoying this ‘Music from South America’ episode of the Classical For Everyone Podcast. The Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos is perhaps the only South American composer whose works in traditional forms like symphonies and concertos have found something like a permanent place on the international concert stage… But considering the range, scale and quality of his output… I’d argue he deserves a much bigger place. Here is the first section of his Guitar Concerto from 1952. In one of the quirks of the globalisation of classical music its first performance was in Houston, Texas. It is about 6 minutes long and in this performance Goran Söllscher plays the guitar and is joined by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

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That was the first section of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Guitar Concerto. Goran Söllscher played the guitar and was accompanied by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The Argentine Alberto Ginastera is a composer who I think I have only heard performed once. Now that is not a big enough sample to make too much of a fuss about… but I do think that like so many composers he falls into the ‘unjustly neglected’ category. Let me strike a small blow to right that wrong. I’m going to play you the first five sections of Ginastera’s ‘Concert Variations' from 1953… though he called it ‘Veriaciones concertantes’. Each section is only a couple of minutes long and each one features on or two solo instruments standing out from the orchestra.

Here is the remarkable Israel Chamber Orchestra led by the Uruguayan conductor Gisèle Ben-Dor, who incidentally received her first professional conducting job at the age of 14 in 1969. Making her almost certainly one of the very first female conductors. Here she is with Ginastera’s ‘Concert Variations’.

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That was the Israel Chamber Orchestra with the conductor Gisèle Ben-Dor performing the first five sections of Alberto Ginastera’s Variaciones concertantes… Concert Variations.

Ok. I have another sample of the work of the contemporary composer Osvaldo Golijov. This is from his 2003 opera ‘Ainadamar’ written to a libretto by David Henry Hwang. Apart from being a wonderful opera it is a great example of the complex cultural relationships and cross-pollination between most of the composers whose works I’m playing in this episode and the rest of the world. So… Golijov is an Argentinian born into a Jewish family of migrants from Ukraine and Romania. His opera was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the plot of the opera follows the recollections of the actress Margarita Xirgu, in the 1960s, of her friend the Andalusian poet Federico Garcia Lorca who was murdered by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War in 1936… and just to make it even more global the title… Ainadamar is an Arabic word meaning ‘Fountain of Tears’.

Here in this 8 minute song from early in the opera Dawn Upshaw sings the role of Margarita. The song is titled ‘Maraina, tus ojos’… ‘Mariana, Your Eyes’ and the character is singing of an early martyr to the progressive cause in 19^th century Spain, Mariana Pineda. Dawn Upshaw is singing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the conductor is Robert Spano. Osvaldo Golijov’s ‘Ainadamar’.

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That was Dawn Upshaw singing the role of Margarita in the aria ‘Mariana, your eyes’ from Osvaldo Golijov’s opera ‘Ainadamar’ . The orchestra was the Atlanta Symphony and the conductor was Robert Spano.

Back to Brazil. This time for music from the composer Camargo Guarnieri... a part of what I could lazily call his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. But that is not quite what he called it in 1956 when he composed it. His title was ‘Choro for Piano & Orchestra’. Now Choro (actually spelt C H O R O) is a term that broadly means a ‘cry’ or ‘weeping’ and in the 19^th century it was applied to a distinctly Brazilian musical tradition that emerged then. The chôro style is characterized by improvisation, syncopated rhythms, and a deeply expressive, often melancholic quality - but it can also be playful, virtuosic, and spirited. You could also think of chôro as Brazil's equivalent to jazz - a popular musical form that classical composers have elevated and incorporated into concert music. When Guarnieri writes a "Chôro," he's creating a piece that captures the essence of this Brazilian musical soul: the improvisatory feel, the rhythmic vitality, and that particular bittersweet expressiveness that the word "chôro" embodies. So it is a bit more than a Portuguese alternative to ‘concerto’.

Here is the second section from Camargo Guarnieri’s ‘Chôro for Piano and Orchestra’. The piano soloist is Olga Kopylova and the Sāo Paulo Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Roberto Tibiriçá. It is about 7 minutes long.

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That was the second section from Camargo Guarnieri’s ‘Chôro for Piano and Orchestra’. The piano soloist was Olga Kopylova and the Sāo Paulo Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Roberto Tibiriçá.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. I have another couple of pieces coming up but before I get to them I want to give you a little information that I hope you find useful… If you would like to listen to past episodes, of which there are more than a dozen, or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That address again is classicalforeveryone.net. And on the individual episode pages of the website there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes.        

I hope you have enjoyed this South America focused episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net.

Alright, to finish this episode I have a section from one of the eleven surviving symphonies of Heitor Villa-Lobos. I’m going to play you the conclusion of his 6^th symphony from 1944. I hope you will agree this is really exciting music and for what it’s worth I think it rivals works from the middle of the 20^th century that get far more exposure. It is about six minutes long and here again is the Sao Paulo Orchestra conducted this time by Isaac Karabchevsky.

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That was the conclusion of the 6^th symphony by Heitor Villa-Lobos and in that performance the Sao Paulo Orchestra was conducted by Isaac Karabchevsky. Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.

This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is, just for you, another six minutes of Astor Piazzolla. This is his ‘Milonga for Three’ ‘Milonga Per Tre’ and the word Milonga describes a dance rhythm that is thought to have come before the tango… but I think you’ll hear there is a certain similarity. Here are Gidon Kremer playing the violin, Sergio Assad playing the guitar and Per Arne Glorvigen playing the Bandoneon. Thanks again for listening.