Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
String Quartet No.1 Op.20 (1949)
Piano Quintet Op.29 (1963)
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
String Quartet in F major Op.35 (1903)
Michael Korstick (piano)
Minguet Quartet
rec. 2019-24, Deutschlandfunk-Kammermusiksaal, Köln, Germany
cpo 555 633-2 [69]
The Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera wrote few chamber works. There are works for pairs of instruments, the three string quartets, fairly frequently recorded, and the piano quintet, a rarity. To know it helps explain what might seem the rather strange programming of this disc. I hope and expect it to be followed by a companion: Ginastera’s other two quartets and Debussy’s quartet. Such two discs would give us Ginastera’s main chamber works, with the two French works as a bonus.
The first string quartet is a work by a composer who has obviously heard Bartók, though it is not a work of pastiche. The first of four movements, after a call to arms, settles down to a driving rhythm with strong motifs which run throughout. There follows a ghostly scherzo with a good deal of pizzicato. The slow movement, marked Calmo e poetico, has a rather Bartókian melody on the violin over slow chords from the other players. It builds up to an anguished climax. The finale returns to the driving rhythms but is occasionally more playful than the opening movement. This is a thoroughly satisfying quartet.
Between this and the piano quintet comes Ravel’s quartet, familiar to most readers. Those to whom it is not are more likely to search out a recording coupled with Debussy’s quartet, its usual companion. Be that as it may, this is a vivid performance, very well characterized. There is incisive playing in the pizzicato second movement, and the third is dreamier and more expansive than usual. Of course there are many good recordings of this work, but this can hold its own among them.
The piano quintet comes from Ginastera’s later neo-expressionist period. It is in seven short movements, and each alternating one is a cadenza. The opening, declamatory and dissonant, sounds as if Ginastera had been listening to Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie. There then is a sudden calm with bell sounds on the piano and quiet whisperings from the strings. Next comes Cadenza 1, for viola and cello; its angular lyricism is reminiscent of parts of the first string quartet. The third movement, marked Scherzo fantastico, is in the pointillist splintered style of post-Webernianism. Cadenza 2 is for two violins, full of virtuosic writing: double stops, tremolos, passages very high on the instruments, and so on. The fifth movement is slow and quiet. Marked Piccola musica notturna, it is meditative and questing. The Cadenza for piano is short and fierce, like the opening, and the short finale is a wild dance for all the instruments. This is not easy listening but it is an impressive work.
The Minguet Quartet have a long and distinguished discography, and, to their credit, they record unfamiliar works as well as the classics of the genre. They are highly accomplished and play with fire and energy. Michael Korstick is a good partner in the Piano Quintet. The recording is good. I hope I am right about a companion volume with the remaining Ginastera quartets and the Debussy.
Stephen Barber
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