Carlos Guastavino
Carlos Guastavino wrote hundreds of songs for voice and piano that stay tonal and lushly romantic, coloured by Argentine folk music. Favourites such as La rosa y el sauce and Se equivocó la paloma still turn up in recital and in chamber transcriptions.
He was sometimes called the Schubert of the Pampas: a conservative craftsman who set Neruda, Borges, folk poets and his own words in an intimate, nationalist idiom closer to Aguirre and the European romantics than to the modernism around him. Beyond the songs he left piano pieces, choral and chamber scores, and three guitar sonatas. On these discs his melodies appear both as sung originals and as material for saxophone or cello, sitting beside Piazzolla and Ginastera where folk, classical and the dance floor meet.
Compositions by Carlos Guastavino appear on
Argentine Cello
More than Piazzolla alone: seven Argentine composers shape a cello-and-piano programme of tango, pampas colour and lyric nationalism, played by Zoe Knighton and Amir Farid.
Night and Dreams
Soprano Merlyn Quaife and guitarist Jochen Schubert present songs by Mozart and Schubert, among them the Serenade and Nacht und Träume, with Spanish and Argentinian folksong settings by Moretti, Gerhard and Guastavino.
The Rose and the Willow
Saxophone and piano rebuild Piazzolla, Ginastera and Guastavino from bare elements, treating improvisation as equal partner so both instruments share the musical weight.