Stravinsky suffered what he called “the most tragic year of my life” in 1939. His daughter, wife, and mother all died within months of each other, and the outbreak of World War II sent him into exile for the second time, from his adopted home in Paris to the United States. He married his longtime mistress, Vera, in 1940, and together they settled in West Hollywood in 1941. Stravinsky soon accepted a commission from a local conductor, Werner Janssen, and began what would be his first major work composed entirely in the United States, Danses concertantes.

The musical language of Danses concertantes is typical of Stravinsky’s neoclassical style, full of quick character changes, crisp rhythms, bone-dry textures, and tight harmonies. With its small orchestra and ample instrumental solos, Danses concertantes exhibits a kinship to the “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto from 1938; the two works have been called Stravinsky’s "Brandenburgs," after Bach’s famous set of mixed-ensemble concertos. Even though Stravinsky designed Danses concertantes for the concert stage, it did not take long for its inherent dance sensibility to be recognized. Stravinsky’s friend and longtime collaborator George Balanchine was the first to choreograph the work when he created a version in 1944 for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a successor to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

Danses concertantes begins with an introductory March, its steady meter obscured by shifting layers and displaced accents. The only extended solo in this preparatory movement is for the leader of the six-member violin section. The second movement is a Pas d’action, borrowing a term from ballet for an ensemble dance. The third movement, taking the form of a theme and variations, is the longest and most abstracted of the work. The thematic section is tender and diffuse, and the playful variations and shuffling coda bear little surface resemblance to the theme. The Pas de deux borrows another dance convention: a dance for two, often for the romantic leads. Here, the oboe and clarinet take the spotlight, their duet surrounded by other reveries. The concluding March revisits the opening music.

Aaron Grad ©2014

Alberto Ginastera was 21 and still a conservatory student in his native Buenos Aires when he completed his first ballet, Panambí. With the performance of orchestral excerpts in 1937 and a full staging in 1940, the young composer established himself as a potent voice in Argentinian concert music. He also won over the American ballet producer Lincoln Kirstein, who encountered Ginastera while on a Latin American tour and commissioned Estancia, the gaucho-themed ballet that remains Ginastera’s most recognizable calling card. After a summer at Tanglewood in 1941, studying composition with Aaron Copland, and a U.S. residency from 1945 -1947 funded by a Guggenheim grant, Ginastera cemented his place as the most significant Argentinian composer on the international scene.

The Variaciones concertantes date from 1953, during a difficult period when conflict with the regime of Juan Perón cost Ginastera his teaching job. The commission from the association Amigos de la Música and the premiere performance led by world-famous maestro Igor Markevitch buoyed Ginastera’s public standing at a critical time. As he wrote on a program note, “These variations have a subjective Argentine character. Instead of using folkloristic material, I try to achieve an Argentine atmosphere through the employment of my own thematic and rhythmic elements. The work begins with an original theme followed by eleven variations, each one reflecting the distinctive character of the instrument featured. All the instruments of the orchestra are treated soloistically. Some variations belong to the decorative, ornamental or elaborative type, others are written in the contemporary manner of metamorphosis, which consists of taking elements of the main theme and evolving from it new material.”

The strong contours of the central theme help it to stand out as it goes through its many transformations. In the first statement by a solo cello, supported only by a harp, the melody toggles between the steady keynote and its upper neighbors (first rising a half-step, next rising a minor third). Other variants invert the pattern, like in the variation in canon for oboe and bassoon that oscillates downward from a fixed pitch. The boisterous final variation, “in the style of a Rondo,” draws from Stravinsky’s incisive neoclassicism and Copland’s folksy dance music to forge an original style, one rooted in Argentina’s lively cities and vast countryside.

— © Aaron Grad

Aaron Grad ©2017