Alberto Ginastera's Variaciones Concertantes

 

If you look closely at the CD cover above, you'll see Ginastera down at the bottom in third place. Although the other two pieces are lovely and world premiere recordings to boot, my love goes out to the concert variations this time. I was thrilled when my mother sent me this recording right after I moved to Germany in 1990. George Manahan and I had a friendly relationship while I lived in Richmond. We had dinner together and I went to very many of his orchestra rehearsals. We often talked about music together and I would lend him books about Mahler that he hadn't read yet. In one case, while he was rehearsing Mahler 5, he stopped during the Adagietto, turned around and asked ME what I thought about the balance between the harps and the orchestra, even though his assistant conductor was sitting up in the balcony. I was sitting down below with two of my best friends, my girlfriend and her parents. I felt like a king. 

I never got to hear him conduct Ginastera, though. I believe my introduction to it was when I heard a visiting orchestra rehearsing it in the band room of Ewell Hall at William & Mary in 1982. Watching and listening to the young performers having fun with this extremely bouncy and beautiful piece, I could not help but fall in love with it. 

Last week the Stuttgart Staatsorchester live-streamed a performance conducted by the exciting and beautiful Alondra de la Parra. My son returned home from work just as the last piece on the program was beginning. I invited him to join me in watching it. A good flute player in his own right, he enjoyed the performance as well. That concert is no longer available online, but the WDR Funkhausorchester recorded it last year and you can watch it now.

Back in 1985 I somehow heard that Ginastera's widow Aurora Natola-Ginastera was to be playing some Bach Cello Suites in a town about an hour from Richmond. I drove out there and joined an audience of about two dozen listeners in the upstairs room of a right-wing political party's headquarters. Why she was playing there I'll never know. Nor did I care once she began with her Bach. She introduced her playing by talking about her thoughts on cello technique. I remember she told us to watch her bow hand and notice how it moved much like an artist's hand as it paints on a canvas. She did indeed move it beautifully. 

And this brings me to a story about the solo cellist in the Richmond Sinfonia's recording, Neal Cary. He was new to Richmond in 1988. After hearing his solo in the third movement of Brahms Second Piano Concerto, I fell in love with his beautiful tone. I invited him to come to my apartment and surprise my girlfriend on Valentine's Day with a Suite by Bach. I've had a soft spot in my heart for the cello ever since these wonderful experiences.



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